Never mind that Chinese have nicknamed Donald Trump “Big Mouth” and “Broken Bed” (or chuang po), an unflattering reference to shoddy construction (which also sounds like the way Chinese say “Trump”). Or that the U.S. Republican presidential candidate often talks tough, threatening to levy 45% tariffs on Chinese imports and declare Beijing “a currency manipulator on Day One” in the White House. Despite all the reasons why the Chinese should lobby to dump Trump, just the opposite seems true: Many Chinese just can’t get enough of The Donald.



Part mogul, part politician, 100% entertainer, Trump appeals to many Chinese youth who are spending more, traveling more, and thinking more independently than their parents ever dreamed of doing. You know the type: Just stroll past Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York and you’ll likely encounter excited Chinese tourists snapping selfies.



“To many Chinese who have affection for the controversial figure, Trump is more than a politician. The real estate tycoon’s reality TV show ‘The Apprentice I’ has a score of 8.8 out of 10 on Chinese media review site douban.com,” reported the state-run newspaper Global Times, which often reflects nationalistic views (Douban.com is the Chinese equivalent of RottenTomatoes.com). On a recent visit to Beijing, an American foreign-policy analyst who met with Chinese counterparts came away concluding that “all they wanted to know was what to expect from a Trump presidency. It was Trump, Trump, Trump.”



To be sure, Trump has his share of Chinese detractors. In a scathing editorial titled “Trump opens Pandora’s box in U.S.,” the Global Times recently described him as a “rich narcissist and inflammatory candidate” and initially a “clown.” Now, Trump has “even been called another Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler by some Western media… The rise of a racist in the U.S. political arena worries the whole world.” The paper pointed out that both Mussolini and Hitler rose to power “through elections, a heavy lesson for Western democracy… The U.S. had better watch itself for not being a source of destructive forces against world peace, more than pointing fingers at other countries for their so-called nationalism and tyranny.”



Different Chinese social groups see Trump through different prisms (list is below). Yet nearly all find compelling novelty in the prospect of a world leader who’s got it and just flaunts it. For four decades, since the death of Mao Zedong, China’s top leaders have been cool, calculating types who have obeyed the rule, “hide your capabilities and bide your time.” But now the American political system – supposedly the most developed in the world – has unexpectedly spawned a flamboyant loudmouth who just might become the most powerful man in the world. (Or, maybe the second most powerful, behind Chinese President Xi Jinping.) “I’ve watched many of Trump’s speeches… His plain way of speaking is quite appealing,” said Sun Wei, a Chinese employee of Tianjin Airlines. “I sincerely hope Trump wins, which could bring the world more fun.”



Here’s how different groups in China view the leading Republican presidential candidate:



THE INTERNET CROWD



Chinese netizens are some of Trump’s biggest fans. They’ve flocked to microblogging accounts with titles like “Great Man Donald Trump” and “Trump Fan Club.” The Guojiang Subtitle Group, comprised of dozens of volunteers nationwide who produce Chinese subtitles for primarily American television shows, stumbled onto the Trump phenomenon when they translated the U.S. presidential debates.



When the translators subtitled the first U.S. Republican debate Aug. 6, and uploaded the video to their Weibo microblogging account, it quickly attracted millions of views. “Wonderful fight,” said one Weibo user. “It’s as fascinating as watching a reality show.” (Western media have found Trump fans in other weird corners of the Middle Kingdom, such as Shenzhen Trump Industries which was founded in 2002 and produces high-end toilet seats, allowing a Foreign Policy headline to trumpet: “In China, Trump Toilets Make Pooping Great Again.”)



Just as Trump’s candidacy has been distinctly entertaining for Americans, it’s been so for Chinese as well. Even if ordinary Chinese folks can’t vote for their own president – Beijing doesn’t have national-level direct elections – some had a chance to vote when they participated to last month’s online poll conducted by huanqiu.com, a site affiliated with the Global Times. Fifty-four percent of people voted in favor of Trump. This may reveal as much about Chinese distrust of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, however, as it does about approval for Trump. Clinton rubbed Chinese officialdom the wrong way back in 1995, when she appeared at a women’s conference in Beijing criticizing China’s human rights record. She’s been seen as tough on China ever since.



A senior Chinese expert on American affairs, Wu Xinbo, said the huanqiu.com survey reflected Chinese “discontent” over the Asia policies of U.S. Democrats in general and Clinton in particular, which “have caused dissatisfaction among Chinese netizens, while Trump’s outspokenness and straightforwardness have gained him more support.”



FOREIGN-POLICY WONKS



Some Chinese think tank analysts are secretly rooting for a Trump presidency –not because they think Trump’s so great. Rather, it’s because they think his business background will make Trump more “pragmatic” in dealing with China, unlike Clinton, who’s seen as an idealistic “rabble-rouser.” Ever sensitive to the delicate balance between status-quo power America and rising economic giant China, these experts are heartened by Trump’s calls for the U.S. to diminish its NATO involvement and dial back support for (and American troops based in) allies Japan and South Korea. Beijing strategists welcome a lower U.S. profile abroad, as China flexes its muscles – both economically in developing markets, and militarily in the South China Sea.



At a time when Beijing’s economy is seen as taking over the world, some Chinese policy makers regard Trump as an isolationist less likely to tangle with Beijing. As a successful tycoon, Trump won’t easily jeopardize economic ties with China, says Sun Chenghao, analyst with the Chinese Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. “He’s unlikely to threaten Sino-U.S. relations as he has no political experience in dealing with China.”



Many Chinese believe this, despite Trump's heated campaign rhetoric blaming China for U.S. woes ("The greatest debt in the history of the world is what China has done to us. They've taken our jobs. They've taken our money. They've taken everything," Trump said.) Why? While U.S. presidential elections often feature China-bashing candidates, the world looks very different once the winner steps into the Oval Office. Beijing cynics maintain that Americans will essentially say anything to get elected, but change their tune once confronted with the fact that the economies of China and America are deeply intertwined.



THE NOUVEAU RICHE



Trump’s wealth also helps explain a degree of Chinese ambivalence toward him. After Trump revealed on the “Today” show that his father had given him a “small” million-dollar loan to get his start in business, Chinese commentators sneered that he was a typical “second-generation rich kid” and likened Trump to the son of a wealthy Chinese family who famously bought Apple Watches for his dog. “Yet some of us also find ourselves drawn to him because in Trump we see some of our own dreams,” said 30-something Beijing office worker Kevin Wang, who described his conflicted feelings with the popular Internet phrase “xianmu jiduhen” -- a mix of envy, jealousy and a tinge of hatred.





It’s the same phrase often used to describe Chinese feelings toward the country’s own homegrown Trumps. According to the 2016 Hurun Global Rich List, 568 of the world’s 2,188 billionaires are Chinese (many of them property moguls); 100 of them live in Beijing. By contrast the U.S. has 535, with 95 of them calling New York home.



Though Chinese real estate developers are often seen as rapacious, a handful are immensely popular because of their colorful personalities and candor. The most famous is Ren Zhiqiang, nicknamed “The Big Gun” for his outspokenness, and sometimes dubbed “China’s Donald Trump.” Ren’s Weibo microblogging account had as many as 37 million followers – that is, until it was recently shut down by government censors because Ren had questioned the party’s tightening grip on domestic media. "When does the people’s government turn into the party’s government? [Are the media] funded by party membership dues?,” Ren had tweeted, adding “Don’t waste taxpayers’ money on things that do not provide them with services."



THE NEO-MAOISTS



Then there are neo-Maoists, many of them nostalgic for the authoritarian habits of China’s Great Helmsman Mao Zedong, who died in 1976. Maoist orthodoxy is long gone, but his model of consolidating power resonates with President Xi. In four years, Xi has centralized authority and neutralized potential rivals in a way not seen since Mao’s day. While Xi has kept secret any personal views on Trump, he’s no doubt aware of the mogul’s autocratic style and brash decision-making. And perhaps Xi’s studied Mao’s own preference for American “rightists” – Republicans – whom Mao considered easier to deal with than pesky “leftist” Democrats. While hosting U.S. President Richard Nixon on his 1972 visit to Beijing– a stunning foreign-policy coup that began the normalization of Sino-U.S. ties after decades in the deep freeze -- Mao confessed “I am comparatively happy when these [American] people on the right come into power."



Could the two strongmen, Xi and Trump, ever be comrades-in-arms? Some Chinese sense that Trump takes their nation and its leaders seriously. (His granddaughter – Ivanka Trump’s daughter – Arabella, now 4, has studied Mandarin since she was 18 months old.) In an article widely circulated on messaging network Wechat, author Wan Weigang claimed Trump’s book “Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again” proves him to embrace the “mildest” political views of all the Republican candidates. In other words, Trump isn’t as extreme as he seems.



And Chinese were as mesmerized as Americans were by a recent viral video that was simply a mash-up of shots showing Trump saying “China” over and over, in different venues and contexts, hundreds of times. Nothing is more fascinating to Chinese than Westerners who find China fascinating. Perhaps for all the wrong reasons lots of Chinese have thrown their support behind Trump, in hopes he’ll play “Let’s Make a Deal” with Beijing.



Melinda Liu has been Newsweek's Beijing Bureau Chief since 1998, and during a prior posting opened the bureau in 1980.





































































































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