In China, some see the ghost of Mao as Trump upends America and the world

Ding Xueliang spent his early teenage years in China as a fervent believer and practitioner of Chairman Mao Zedong’s revolutionary ideals — but he never imagined those memories would one day be stirred by a sitting US president. In 1966, at just 13 years old, the son of poor farmers became one of Mao’s Red Guards. He joined millions of young people across China to participate in the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long upheaval set off by an aging Mao to reassert his absolute control over the ruling Communist Party – with the stated goal of preserving communist ideology. Nearly six decades later, Ding is a distinguished scholar of Chinese politics based in Hong Kong, with a PhD from Harvard and a career teaching about the catastrophic movement he embraced. But in recent months, he has begun to see uncanny echoes of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in an unexpected place: Donald Trump’s America. To be clear, there are profound, incomparable differences between the deadly violence and chaos unleashed by a dictator in a one-party state, and an elected president’s divisive attempts to expand executive power within a mature democracy. “It’s not identical,” Ding said. “But there are certainly parallels.” As Trump upends the very institutions, alliances, and free trade order that have underpinned America’s global dominance since World War II, some in China are reminded of their own former leader — one who wielded revolutionary zeal to tear down the old world more than half a century ago. In articles and social media posts, Chinese scholars and commentators have drawn comparisons between Trump and Mao. Some referenced the Cultural Revolution – at times obliquely to avoid censorship; others highlighted Trump’s apparent appetite for chaos, and the rising signs of authoritarianism and personality cult within his administration. Since returning to the White House, Trump has disrupted the federal bureaucracy – dismantling agencies, purging officials and slashing civil service jobs. He has waged a war on ideology that conservatives deem “woke” and attacked elite universities – including Ding’s alma mater Harvard – for “liberal indoctrination,” threatening to cut their federal funding. He’s also pledged to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and “put American workers first.” And in the US president, Ding noticed what he said were striking similarities with the late Chinese chairman whom he once worshiped as a young Red Guard: despite their vast differences, they both share a deep contempt for intellectual elites, a strong mistrust of the bureaucratic apparatus, and a populist appeal aimed at farmers and blue-collar workers. ‘Imitating Chairman Mao’ During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s Red Guards declared war against the “Four Olds” – old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas – to erase remnants of China’s pre-communist past. (It led to the widespread destruction of some of the country’s most valuable historical and cultural artifacts.) That campaign stemmed from Mao’s long-held belief in “first destroy, then establish” – the idea that old systems, ideologies, or institutions must be demolished before new ones can be erected in their place. Coming from an impoverished family, Ding eagerly took part in public humiliation rallies against teachers, intellectuals, government officials and others labeled as enemies of Mao’s vision. “I was especially enthusiastic about the Cultural Revolution because I was born into a family of three generations of poor farmers — one of the ‘five red categories.’ At the time, I felt the Cultural Revolution was extremely important for us, it was wonderful,” he said. But as China learned over a harrowing decade, it’s far easier to tear things down than to rebuild them. Mao’s violent mass movement shut down schools, paralyzed the government, shattered the economy, destroyed religious and cultural relics – turmoil that only subsided after the leader’s death in 1976. Historians estimate somewhere between 500,000 and two million people lost their lives. Now, some Chinese are looking at that tumultuous chapter of their own history to make sense of the change Trump is unleashing in America. Among Mao’s most ardent admirers, there’s a sense of pride that the US president appears to be borrowing from the revolutionary playbook of their esteemed supreme leader. One blogger likened Trump’s February tweet — “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” — to Mao’s iconic slogan: “To rebel is justified.” “Trump is adept at imitating Chairman Mao. Trump is China’s true opponent,” the blogger concluded. Other Mao fans cheered Trump for cozying up to Vladimir Putin’s Russia while snubbing Ukraine and Europe, said Wu Qiang, an independent analyst in Beijing who is studying Chinese perceptions of Trump. Ever since his first term, Trump has earned the nickname “Chuan Jianguo,” or “Trump, the nation builder” among Chinese nationalists — a mocking suggestion that he is making China stronger by undermining America. For some Chinese liberals, however, Trump’s sweeping expansion of executive power and attacks on press freedom, academic independence and the rule of law in the first 100 days of his second term have sparked disbelief, frustration and disappointment. On Chinese social media, users voiced their disillusionment in the comment sections of US Embassy accounts, lamenting that America no longer resembles the ideal they once believed in. “I always thought the US was a beacon to the world, standing for justice and fairness. But its recent actions have been completely disillusioning … Many Chinese people’s faith in America has been shattered!” said a comment on the US Embassy’s WeChat account. Others made oblique references to Mao. Underneath the embassy’s post celebrating Trump’s first 100 days in office, a Chinese user wrote: “Sailing the seas depends on the helmsman.” That’s the title of a revolutionary song eulogizing Mao, which became the popular anthem of the Cultural Revolution. Another wrote: “The American people also have their own sun,” complete with a smirking dog emoji. Mao was extolled as the “red sun of China” at the height of his personality cult during the mass movement. ‘American-style Cultural Revolution’ For years, Chinese liberals have quietly warned of a creeping return to the Cultural Revolution under Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao. A devoted student of the “Great Helmsman,” Xi has steered China closer to strongman rule and curtailed individual freedoms in ways critics say are reminiscent of that era. And so, it was all the more striking for some Chinese liberals to witness an authoritarian turn seemingly unfolding in Washington, which under former President Joe Biden had framed the US competition with China as “democracy versus authoritarianism.” Less than a month into Trump’s second term, Zhang Qianfan, a constitutional law professor in Beijing, was already alarmed by the emergence of what he called an “American-style Cultural Revolution.” “The Cultural Revolution was essentially a power struggle,” he said. Mao was insecure about his authority, eroded by three years of famine caused by his disastrous “Great Leap Forward” industrialization campaign; he was also suspicious of the establishment built by himself, claiming that “representatives of the bourgeoisie” had sneaked into the party, the government, the army and the cultural spheres. Similarly, Trump believes the “deep state” is out to get him. And like Mao, he turned to loyalists outside the establishment to reshape the system and bend it to his will, Zhang said. “Mao unleashed the Red Guards to ‘smash’ the police, prosecutors, and courts, so that loyal revolutionaries could seize control of state machinery,” he said. “Trump brought Elon Musk and six young Silicon Valley executives into the White House under the banner of eliminating corruption, waste, and inefficiency — akin to the ‘Cultural Revolution Leadership Group’ entering the party’s central leadership.” Zhang was equally unsettled by the growing signs of a personality cult in Washington. Last month, when he saw a social media photo of a gold pin in the shape of Trump’s profile worn on the chest of Brendan Carr, chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, he initially thought it was fake news or a parody. In China, such a badge carries heavy political symbolism. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s badges were worn ubiquitously by Red Guards and others as a public display of loyalty to the chairman and devotion to the revolution. “During Trump’s presidential inauguration speech, Republican lawmakers all stood up and applauded with such fervor that it rivaled North Korea. These are deeply troubling signs,” Zhang said. “People are seeing all kinds of sycophancy in the US that would have once been unimaginable.” Trump has even publicly flirted with the idea of seeking an unconstitutional third term, saying he was “not joking” and claiming that “a lot of people want me to do it.” Mao ruled China until his death. Xi is serving a third term after abolishing presidential term limits in 2018 in a move praised by Trump. “He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump said at the time in closed-door remarks obtained by CNN. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” ‘Beacon of democracy’ All the parallels aside, the first 100 days of Trump’s second term are radically different from Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which devastated China, saw millions of people persecuted and resulted in more than 1.7 million deaths, according to the party’s own count. Unlike Mao, Trump did not mobilize youths across America to form a nationwide, self-organized political movement. “The January 6 attack on the US Capitol was somewhat similar, but it didn’t take off – it did not become a national rebellion in the US,” said Ding, the former Red Guard. To Ding, the two leaders also differ dramatically in their global ambitions. “Whereas Mao’s Cultural Revolution had a grand goal for China to replace the Soviet Union and become the sole guiding force for the global proletarian revolution, Trump’s movement lacks such an ambitious, internationalist vision,” he said. “Instead, Trump has utterly damaged America’s image, credibility, and influence within the global camp of liberal democracies.” In many ways, Trump is reshaping the global order. He has disrupted the transatlantic alliance – a cornerstone of Western security for decades – and pushed Asian allies to pay more for US protection. He also narrowed the focus of his global tariff war squarely on China, effectively cutting off trade between the world’s largest economies – until both sides announced a 90-day reduction in tariffs on Monday. Wu, the political analyst in Beijing, believes Trump has a substantial base of support in China – larger than many might expect. “The enthusiasm for Trump — from intellectuals and elites to ordinary people — reflects a deeper dissatisfaction with China’s current political system,” he said. For many Maoists, Trump has sparked their renewed yearning for a political movement that can bring China closer to what they see as the social equality and ideological purity of the Mao era, Wu noted. Some in the business community believe Trump’s radical approach can finally push China to enact the painful reforms it needs. To Wu, their support of Trump signals a symbolic gesture: a longing for change. “What they share is a desire to see a Trump-like movement, or even a Cultural Revolution-style political shakeup, take place in China — a way to break from the status quo,” he said. Zhang, the law professor in Beijing, said similarly, Trump’s reelection reflected widespread political discontent in the US. “In this context, America’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ can be seen as a desperate response to the failure of democracy,” he said. But Zhang believes there’s no need to be overly pessimistic. After Mao’s final decade of turmoil and destruction, China moved away from the fervor of ideological and class struggles to focus on economic growth. It opened up to the world and embraced the global order that the US helped create, and the rest is history. “After all, every country makes mistakes — what matters is whether it can correct them in time,” Zhang said. “Right now in the United States, the breakdown and the repair of its social contract are locked in a race. If America can mend that contract before Trump and his MAGA movement inflict lasting damage…then there is still hope. The ‘beacon of democracy’ can shine again.”