Former President Donald Trump thumps Vice President Harris in name recognition and cache, but analysts say Beijing sees both as bad news.
The day after President Biden announced that he was not seeking reelection, a newspaper in China conducted an informal poll online, asking: Who do you think can win, former President Donald Trump or Vice President Harris?
The result was a landslide for Trump, with nearly 80% of the 22,000 votes cast.
But for the Chinese government, it’s not so clear cut.
The former president’s name does have caché in China — there’s a real estate firm bearing the Trump name, a toilet company called Trump, even a made-in-China car called the Trumpchi. After the July 13 assassination attempt against Trump, there was an outpouring on Chinese social media praising him for being tough. And he’s been in the public eye for years.
People like 27-year-old Hugo Chen got exposed early — in his case, through a teacher who thought watching Trump’s reality TV show The Apprentice was a good way to learn English.
« In primary school, probably fourth or fifth [grade], our teacher played this show to us », Chen says.
« I thought Donald Trump was really aggressive, very strong-minded, also very rich, for sure. And during the show I thought Donald Trump himself was a very solid image of the American dream », he says.
But he says if he could vote in the United States, he wouldn’t pick either — because they’re both bad for China.
After Trump was elected, optimism in Beijing that he might be somebody with whom China could cut deals quickly faded. Trump launched a trade war in 2018 and his policy toward Beijing hardened after COVID-19 emerged.
When Biden took office, the Chinese government said it hoped relations would soon get back on “the right track », only to be disappointed again.
Now, facing four years of Trump or Harris in the Oval Office, hope has given way to resignation in Beijing.
Zha Daojiong, an international relations expert at Peking University, says there isn’t much daylight between the Republicans and Democrats on China.
