The ancient Chinese act of kowtowing required touching the ground with one’s forehead in deference to the emperor. The modern American act of kowtowing requires absurdly praising President Donald Trump.

“We thank you for the opportunity and blessing,” the White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said at a cabinet meeting on Monday, “to serve your agenda.” The health secretary, Tom Price, remarked on “what an incredible honor it is” to lead his department “at this pivotal time under your leadership”.

Those remarks sound similar to some of the toady public statements of China’s premier, Li Keqiang, who in early March attributed “all of the achievements of the past year to the sound leadership” of the top of the Communist party – with his boss, China’s president, Xi Jinping, at its core.

Sadly for Americans, Trump’s requirement that his underlings praise him is not the only way the president is prodding Washington towards Beijing-like levels of obeisance, opacity, prevarication and corruption. Trump’s insistence on “loyalty” from government officials – from low-level appointees to the recently fired FBI director, James Comey – calls to mind the chief Chinese corruption investigators, the heads of the state security and cybersecurity agencies, and the journalists who have pledged “absolute loyalty” to Xi.



The Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s February tweet about serving “at the pleasure of @POTUS. His message is my message. His goals are my goals,” echoes a notorious remark by Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing: “I was Chairman Mao’s dog,” Jiang said at her 1980 trial. “Whomever he told me to bite, I bit.”

And Trump’s attacks on the media – from his February tweet calling the mainstream American media “the enemy of the American People” to his recurring attacks on true reporting as “fake news” – stems from a desire for positive press coverage: the only type of press coverage the Chinese media offers on Xi.

With regards to opacity, Beijing’s strategy of keeping the curtains closed is intentional: it’s hard to know what the top Chinese officials think of important issues like internet censorship and North Korean aggression because they rarely express their views publicly, the party fetters Chinese media, and leaks to international media are rare.

For all of Trump’s claims that unpredictability is a sound political strategy, the White House’s opacity arises more out of infighting and incompetence. (Americans also benefit from a free and raucous press, and the fact that the Trump White House leaks like a punctured carburetor.)

And yet, for China and the United States, the result are the same: strategic ambiguity, and policy confusion. Years ago, I heard a story in Beijing of a minister giving a speech about an important economic directive. So intentionally vague and ambiguous was the minister’s language that his underlings spent the next several hours anxiously trying to decipher China’s policy from their minister’s confusing words.

After four Arab countries cut ties with Qatar in early June, the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, called on the countries to quickly reduce tensions. Yet less than an hour later, Trump seemed to undercut Tillerson, stating that punishing Qatar was “hard but necessary”.



The ruling Chinese Communist party is far kinder to the truth than it was during the late 1950s, when officials across the country lied about crop yields to please Mao while millions starved to death. And yet Beijing still repetitively pretends Tibetans and Uighurs live happily under Chinese rule, for example, and that Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of assembly. Similarly, Trump seems to believe that uttering something – the size of his inauguration crowds, or the breadth of his achievements – makes it so.

And finally, Jared and Ivanka Kushner are the first American princelings – a Chinese term referring to the sons and daughters of the red aristocracy, who enrich themselves via their family connections and play an exceptionally large role in politics – to wield such power in the White House.



To be sure, there are monumental differences between Beijing and Washington. Most importantly, while Trump’s cabinet, staff members, and even some Republican lawmakers may feel required to praise him and yield to him, Democrats most certainly do not: after Trump’s cabinet meeting, the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, released a video parodying the event. And unlike in China, Americans are free to criticize their leader however they choose.

That’s what makes the small signs of corporate hesitation at aggressively anti-Trump satire so worrying: in late May, CNN fired the comedian Kathy Griffin from her role as co-host of its New Years Eve program after she appeared in a photo shoot holding the bloody head of a figure resembling Trump. Roughly a week later, the network announced it was cancelling the religious scholar Reza Aslan’s show after he called Trump “a piece of shit”.



And on Sunday, Delta and Bank of America pulled their sponsorship from a New York City Public Theater adaptation William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar – but with the eponymous murdered character updated to resemble Trump. TheTrump cabinet kowtow was disgusting. But even if these corporations are not glancing the ground with their head, their minor bow to Emperor Trump is shameful enough.

