China: unmistakable signs of Trumpism?
Since the covid-19 pandemic started 22 months ago, China has locked down, severely restricting flights in and out of the country, as well as an ideological shuttering within its borders.
Authorities are using the public health crisis to stoke the fires of nationalism, encourage a return to traditional values, silence liberal voices, and attack with increasing shrillness the "pollution" of Western values, including democracy, press freedom, and an independent judiciary.
It doesn't take a political scientist to see this as "Trumpism on steroids," in the nationalist intolerance for dissenting voices, and the call for a conservatist return to the cultural and ideological past.
All this looks to be, in part, a reaction to U.S. trade restrictions and strident criticism of the top-down, authoritarian nature of the Chinese government, by the previous leadership.
One notable example is the decision by some highly-visible U.S. officials to induce dissident Chinese scientists to lie about the genesis of the Covid virus, as a pretext for broader attacks, in a bid to destabilize the regime.
Trump loyalists like Steve Bannon, who arranged for the covert escape of a Hong Kong virologist, Yan Li-Meng, who as a harbored and coached fugitive, agreed to misuse her credentials to parrot misinformation, such as the covid-19 strain had "markers," proving it was produced by genetically altering a similar coronavirus and, in all likelihood, deliberately released it.
This was just one avenue of attack, as Trump, possibly influenced by Bannon--a fanatical foe of the communist regime since his military service in the region,--kept up a steady drumbeat of hostile snti-Chinese rhetoric, as well as launching a confrontational trade war by imposing prohibitive tarrifs on raw materials and some consumer goods, to some extent aggravating an overall slowdown of the Chinese economy.
Militarily, China has also become increasingly assertive in the South China Sea, increasing "defense" spending, opening military bases, and seeking to expand it's "sphere of influence."
At the same time, it has initiated an ambitious infrastructure construction program to connect it by roads, airports and harbors, to the neighboring countries in southeast Asia.
While not all of this is Trump's doing, of course, there is no question his administration started a cultural, political, and economic war using every tool at his disposal, including a propaganda campaign built on some fact, half-truths, and outright lies, in a fashion so recognizable to his many critics in the U.S.
Thus the damage done by the former president's policies, including it's corrosively subversive elements, continue to reverberate, both at home and abroad, China being one particularly evident example, one with potentially disastrous long-term consequences..