The coming MAGA-CCP alignment
Trump’s praise for Xi. Hierarchy over equality. Party-dominated governance. Social and cultural conservatism. The indicators are there.
There’s a good chance that Donald Trump will bring his movement and his Party into alignment with Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. Before you dismiss my forecast, hear me out. Dig deeper past the superficial “anti-communist” rhetoric. Consider the following indicators:
Trump’s praise for Xi Jinping
MAGA’s affinity for strongmen and authoritarian leadership
Common social and cultural conservative values
Shared preference for Party-dominated governance
The ease with which Trump has flipped his Party’s positions, such as on Russia and free trade
I am open to disagreement. At the end, I offer a reason against my own case, one that opens up a dark side.
My argument:
Indicator #1: Trump’s repeated praise of Xi Jinping
"He's now president for life, president for life. And he's great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday." March 3, 2018
“President Xi and I have a very strong and personal relationship. He and I are the only two people that can bring about massive and very positive change, on trade and far beyond, between our two great Nations.” December 3, 2018
“I know President Xi of China very well. He is a great leader who very much has the respect of his people. He is also a good man in a ‘tough business.’” August 14, 2019
“[Xi] is strong, sharp and powerfully focused.” February 7, 2020
“[Xi] rules with an iron fist 1.5 billion people, yeah I'd say he's smart.” September 3, 2022
“[Xi] runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. Smart, brilliant, everything perfect.” June 20, 2023
“And I like President Xi a lot, he was a very good friend of mine during my term.” February 4, 2024
“[Xi]’s a brilliant man. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” July 20, 2024
Indicator #2: MAGA affinity for strongmen
Trump has personally bonded with Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán and Kim Jong Un. Each has created realms of personal rule by building parties around themselves or co-opting long-established parties into cults of personality. Through his own words, Trump has praised their rule through strength. For example: “[Orbán]’s the prime minister of Hungary. He’s a very great leader, a very strong man. Some people don’t like him because he’s too strong. It’s nice to have a strongman running the country.”
NYU scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat, whose book “Strongmen“ analyzes the common qualities of authoritarians around the world, said, “Strongmen are a subset of authoritarian who require total loyalty, bend democracy around [their] own needs, and use different forms of machismo to interact with their people and with other rulers.”
Trump’s predilection has infused (or tapped into) his movement’s admiration for strongmen. Reverence for Putin and Orbán has become the norm among the MAGA faithful, including Members of Congress. It’s not a coincidence that the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held its annual conference in Budapest, where participants lauded Orbán’s illiberal strongman methods.
Indicator #3: Shared values of social and cultural conservatism
Under Trump and Xi, we have witnessed an ideological convergence of their Parties’ political philosophies: both value hierarchy and power over equality and rights. Despite the obsolete label, the CCP has evolved into a conservative party. The social, cultural and political values the CCP and GOP have in common include:
Allegiance to the Party Leader as the core of political identity
Assertive nationalism to restore the country’ past glory
Anti-LGBTQ and anti-marriage equality
Promotion of traditional gender roles and masculinity
Pushing women to have more babies as a societal obligation
Assimilationism, anti-pluralism and anti-foreigner
Shared values have not only bonded Trump to Putin and Orbán but MAGA conservatives to Russia and Hungary. They idealize Russia as an “anti-woke” utopia, a reactionary redoubt that preserves natural racial and religious hierarchy, and even made Moscow a destination to “escape LGBT ideology.” Conservative activists have flocked to Budapest, lauding Orbán’s Hungary as a Christian nationalist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant promised land. Isn’t it logical to think Xi’s China would appeal to MAGA for the same reasons?
Indicator #4: Common philosophy of Party-dominated governance
In office, Trump governed with power centralized in his person as President and Party Leader. Project 2025 outlines a plan to institutionalize this model in a second term, empowering him to exert partisan control over the reigns of government and use state power to impress the Party’s economic, cultural and social positions on society. Any China watcher will instantly recognize this as the same “Rule By Law” approach that the CCP uses to rule China. The similarities between MAGA and CCP governance models include:
Installing Party loyalists in government positions
Putting independent federal agencies under Party control
Removing independence of the judiciary and law enforcement
Creating a school for ideological training
Putting undesired ethnic persons in camps
Government regulation of reproduction
Using the military for domestic law enforcement
Indicator #5: Trump’s record of flipping long-held GOP positions
Free trade and anti-Soviet muscularity used to unite Republicans. No more. Trump has embraced the former KGB agent and inheritor of the Soviet legacy Vladimir Putin. Higher tariffs are the core of his economic program. The MAGA movement has followed him on both. While there remain some Party members who cling to the old views, there is no question Trump’s way will be policy if he becomes president again.
On China, recall that Trump was on a cusp of a trade deal with Xi’s government, until COVID hit. On January 22, 2020, Trump tweeted:
One of the many great things about our just signed giant Trade Deal with China is that it will bring both the USA & China closer together in so many other ways. Terrific working with President Xi, a man who truly loves his country. Much more to come!”
Look at those words. It’s not hard to imagine that if Trump had closed the deal, he would elevate his praise of Xi and portray China as a good guy. Imagine that happening again.
Wait, how can you say that? MAGA is full of “anti-communist” messaging
True. It is. Until it isn’t:
“Communist” is merely hollow buzzword synonym for something a MAGA person doesn’t like, like “DEI” or “woke.” A slogan devoid of substantive meaning is easy to set aside, opening the door for the MAGA-CCP ideological affinities to kick in.
MAGA will follow Trump no matter what. History and principle are no impediment.
The GOP’s legacy anti-communist creed is as vulnerable to reversal as were its anti-Russian and pro-free trade principles.
·Kim Jong Un is an über-Communist. Trump embraced him. There’s your precedent.
These five indicators are why I foresee a MAGA-CCP alignment in the future. I think anyone in the China policy space, especially in human rights, needs to contemplate the consequences of this possibility.
I admit I could be wrong
I see the convergence as a likelihood but not a certainty. I’m not Gordon Chang. A major factor is whether Trump becomes president again. And what becomes of MAGA once Trump leaves the scene.
The alignment may not happen. There is a dark reason it might not.
Maybe MAGA views the social and cultural conservatism of China through a different lens than how it sees the social and cultural conservatism of Russia and Hungary. Why? Could it have to do with race? Don’t believe me; believe MAGA. The clue comes from Project 2025, which declares that the Chinese people are not like us. It claims that the people of China, due to their culture and history, are unable to create a “normative nation.” That’s race essentialism. And they put it in writing. I’ll be exploring this idea in an upcoming piece.
This is first in a series on the MAGA effect on China policy. Part 2, Are “anti-CCP” politics a new form of Orientalism?, looks at how political discourse in the U.S. continues to “otherize” and dehumanize the people of China, leading to bad policies based on bigotry.