MAGA with Chinese characteristics

THE INTERNETMAGALGBTMAGALGBT in China is not a friendly place for admirers of anything American. Fire-breathing nationalists, helped by censors who are quick to stamp out liberal views, rule the roost. Yet as China digests the implications of Donald Trump’s re-election as president, including his threat of , many netizens see in him something to like. In their own world of economic anxiety and yawning social divides, strands of the movement seem familiar. can be surprisingly Trumpian. Some of them are even pro-Trump.To be sure, many of those who cheer for Mr Trump do so out of contempt for America. They share video clips showing Mr Trump’s moments of buffoonery, and delight in every gaffe. They sneer at his nominations for cabinet posts—don’t they prove what a sham democracy is, with jobs so flagrantly doled out to loyalists regardless of their suitability? They revel in speculation about the damage his victory may wreak on Western alliances. They relish the thought that he might weaken American support for Taiwan or pull the plug on American military aid for Ukraine. They often refer to him by a nickname: Chuan Jianguo, meaning “Trump the Nation Builder”. It is supposed to be ironic—they mean he is making China stronger by undermining America.Such views echo those of the Communist Party’s propagandists. But China’s nationalists also genuinely admire aspects of Mr Trump. They like his strongman image and the conservative social views he professes. “There are many lessons to be learned by our government departments about Trump’s coming to power,” wrote a prominent doctor, Ning Fanggang, who has nearly 1.6m followers on the microblogging site Weibo and supports attacking Taiwan as well as condemning LGBT activism. “The most important takeaway is this: loud voices do not necessarily represent the true will of the people,” he said, referring to Democrats’ backing for rights. “Trump’s election revealed that the vast majority of ordinary people were opposed to those ideas deep down.”In recent weeks Chinese nationalists have expressed outrage at a video circulating online showing Jin Xing, a transgender broadcasting celebrity, raising a rainbow flag at a performance (Ms Jin was once a male colonel in a Chinese army dance troupe). They have also applauded Mr Trump’s campaign speeches on trans issues. A Weibo user with more than 700,000 followers posted a clip of one of them, in which Mr Trump pledged to “defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology”. Ms Jin and people like her, said the blogger, “must be hopping mad with rage”. Commenters agreed. “This is why I don’t want Trump to win,” said one. “Only Harris can make America even worse.”Many of the nationalists brush off Mr Trump’s talk of imposing tariffs of 60% on Chinese goods. One of them is Ren Yi, a Harvard-educated princeling (as descendants of powerful politicians are known). Mr Ren lives in Beijing and goes by the name “Chairman Rabbit” on social media (his Weibo followers number more than 1.8m). He tells that Mr Trump’s instincts are not necessarily anti-China.For example, he notes, the president-elect has suggested that he would reverse a ban on TikTok, a Chinese-owned video-sharing app, and invite Chinese carmakers to do business in America. The tariff talk is just a tactic, Mr Ren believes: Mr Trump might change his mind if Chinese companies make big investments in America. Mr Ren and other nationalists see promise in Mr Trump’s close associate, Elon Musk, whose auto firm, Tesla, makes more than half of its cars in China. Some of Mr Trump’s picks for senior government posts may be China hawks, but others, like Mr Musk, seem to be “much more open” to China, Mr Ren says.A particularly vocal group of nationalists is known as , or “little pinks”. These young, fiercely patriotic netizens are not the kind of people who, in America, would be thought of as typical Trump supporters. Chinese academics say the pinks are often well-educated and urban. The original little pinks were mainly young women, though the group is now more diverse. As with types in America, the main targets of their discontent are liberals at home, such as Ms Jin. The voices of China’s free-thinkers are often stifled, but there are many of them: Ms Jin has nearly 14m followers on Weibo.As in America, public opinion in China is polarised. Culture wars rage. Some of the nationalists share the misogynist worldview of young men in the West known as “incels” (involuntary celibates), who blame their inability to form sexual relationships on women, whom they see as overly empowered and picky. In China, such people sometimes self-deprecatingly call themselves , which literally means “dick hair”. They do endless battle online with China’s equally fiery feminists.Some of the cyber-liberals point out the irony of their opponents’ pro-Trump views. “Some so-called ‘little pinks’ and patriotic bloggers on Weibo spend their days opposing feminism and rights, demonising the left, and end up idolising one extreme anti-China, deranged right-winger after another,” wrote a Weibo user who has more than 390,000 followers after Mr Trump’s victory.Pro-Trump sentiment, however, will not persuade China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to be better disposed towards America’s next president. Mr Xi shares the nationalists’ views on social values. He would doubtless love it if Mr Trump were to prove as transactional on Taiwan, and as unsympathetic to Ukraine, as his supporters in China hope he will be.But Mr Xi is surely anxious about Mr Trump’s return to power. It will make China’s fraught relationship with America more unpredictable. It could also—if Mr Trump’s threatened tariffs do indeed materialise—further damage China’s struggling economy. America’s election may even have reminded the stability-obsessed Mr Xi of something the little pinks may be wary of saying out loud: citizens embittered by economic malaise can turn against elites.