China's strategic assessments of Trump after Iran attack

Trump’s attacks on Iran, served as a wake-up call for those in Beijing and elsewhere who have pandered the absurd position that Trump is the president of peace and other and other such nonsense.

Featured contributor Prof. Josef Mahoney was interviewed by Meredith C. with South China Morning Post SCMP for her new article on China's strategic assessments of Trump in the wake of his attack on #iran. Link and additional remarks in the comments section.

There is certainly a coterie of Chinese and foreign talking heads in Beijing who are MAGA enthusiasts, including some with direct lines to Trump’s ambassador in Beijing or their own lines to the White House. These include a number of Americans who are ideologically in tune with Trump but also want better China-US relations.

There are others who’ve been warm to Trump for different reasons. These include those who were completely disillusioned with Democrats. Biden completely roiled relations in East Asia, flipped the Philippines, advanced #aukus and the hashtag#quad, imposed the chip ban, and so on. Conversely, they believed that Trump would avoid such alliance-building or fail miserably if he tried.

Some simply concluded that Trump was a catastrophe for the US itself and would accelerate US declines, which would certainly pose risks, but would be preferable to a well-armed hegemon trying to reestablish and sustain control.

Some calculated that Trump would likely target China with new tariffs, but that a deal could be reached, as before—a deal that was not possible with Biden. Some hoped Trump would be less likely to weaponize US power over the global financial system, as Biden had against Russia, which China was not well-positioned to counter.

There were even some who believed that Trump would effectively strike a deal with China that would allow him to reestablish hegemony in the Americas and allow China to attempt the same in Asia, with direct implications for hashtag#taiwan and other hot-spots, and no doubt this fantasy persists in some corners.

Additionally, some Chinese nationalists were sympathetic with the MAGA discourse because their own national rejuvenation rhetoric shares much in common with it. They also found little to criticize in Trump’s immigration policies or border security concerns, which they found perfectly sensible. The limits here were tested of course with Trump targeting Chinese students in the US, but there are some in China who don’t think Chinese should study in America and have no problem with Trump preventing them from doing so.

While all of these perspectives and others have been percolating variously in Beijing and on Chinese social media, I don’t think they’ve been the main drivers of Chinese strategic thought, which has access to a lot more information and intelligence and a vast apparatus of analysis, along with direct, confidential communications with all the important players in various capitals around the world. I don’t think the Chinese leadership was caught off-guard by Trump’s attacks on Iran, but they did serve as a wake-up call of sorts for those in Beijing and elsewhere who’ve pandered for years this absurd position that Trump is the president of peace and other such nonsense.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3315690/are-trumps-iran-strikes-wake-call-china-us-unpredictability

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