the new US debate in China

Trump spurs China’s great debate

Trump’s return has triggered a sharp reassessment within PRC policy circles about US power and the global ideological order. Three prominent analysts frame the debate.

Li Shimo’s spectrum rupture

Venture capitalist and influential public intellectual, Li Shimo 李世默 (Eric X. Li) argues that the twentieth century’s grand left-right ideological spectrum has undergone wholesale fission. The post-Cold War ’unipolar moment’—with its claims of universal values and the end of history—has collapsed into a new divide: defenders of the liberal institutional order versus a heterogeneous coalition of non-liberal forces advocating multipolarity.

Li deems Trump’s MAGA movement ‘revolutionary’, breaking the US politics left-right pattern and reorienting its foreign policy from ‘ideological universalism’ toward ‘illiberal realism’. The new ’macro left-right’ spectrum places firm liberal universalists (Biden Democrats, mainstream EU) on the right; anti-liberal forces (MAGA, European non-liberals, Russia, most Global South states) on the left. Their common denominator: opposition to liberal unipolarity. Li’s framework allows for subtler readings of US complexity.

Jin Canrong 金灿荣, a prominent international relations scholar and public intellectual at Renmin University, similarly to Li Shimo, uses the rise of Donald Trump to argue for a fundamental flaw or fissure in the perceived universal dominance of Western liberal democracy.

Drawing on Steven Hahn’s ‘Illiberal America,’ Jin contends that Beijing’s previous US understanding was ’basically flawed’—an oversimplified focus on American liberalism whilst ignoring its ’dark side.’ Illiberalism (white supremacism, populism, anti-intellectualism) represents not an aberration but a structural component with 250-year roots. Trump’s rise becomes a historical inevitability, not an accident.

Zheng Yongnian’s twin pillars

Zheng Yongnian 郑永年 identifies the PRC–US relationship as the ’twin pillars’ of international order. No new system can emerge without their collaboration; their non-cooperation destabilises everything.

Zheng maps six state responses to PRC–US rivalry

• hoping Beijing leads against Washington

• seeking US favour through anti-China positioning

• urging continued confrontation

• attempting to exclude China from Global South leadership

• provocateurs seeking to draw the US into conflict

• attempting to induce PRC strategic mistakes over Taiwan

Beijing’s challenge: maintain clarity of purpose in both struggle and compromise whilst avoiding being hijacked by smaller states’ interests. Zheng advocates ’anchoring PRC–US relations’ through strategic communication and ’inclusive multilateralism’ that creates a fairer international order.

On Trump’s ’One Big Beautiful Bill,’ Zheng frames it as an ’American defence war’—attempting to restore Anglo-Protestant identity through massive tax cuts (benefiting corporations and the wealthy) whilst slashing welfare. The legislation dismantles the neoliberal welfare state, creating institutionalised inequality. This ’defence’ of traditional WASP culture against multiculturalism has global ramifications: immigration restrictions, withdrawal from UN agencies, and multilateral institutions.

Zheng’s earlier work on CPC ’self-revolution’ provides context. The Party redefined its modernity through continuous adaptation—from revolutionary to ruling party, whilst maintaining its mission. He argues Beijing’s foreign policy thinking must similarly evolve. The simplicities of ’USA: capitalist; PRC: communist’ no longer apply.

Hu Xijin’s regional alarm

Former Global Times editor Hu Xijin 胡锡进 sounds different notes. On US military strikes against Iran (22 June), Hu warns of opening a Middle East ’ Pandora’s box.’ The operation—six B-2 bombers targeting Iranian nuclear sites—represents Trump’s most serious military escalation since returning to office.

Hu foresees surging anti-US and anti-Israel sentiment across the Muslim world. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard vows severe retaliation; Iranian officials consider blockading the Strait of Hormuz. Hu argues the action demonstrates Trump’s political unreliability and highlights how dialogue with the US ultimately depends on military strength rather than diplomatic trust.

This contrasts sharply with the guarded optimism of Wang Jisi 王缉思 about ’strategic communication and identifying mutual interests at leadership levels’. Wang, a Peking University authority on US–China relations and foreign policy, is known for his cautious, pragmatic approach.

The divergence between Hu and Wang reflects broader tensions within Chinese discourse.

technology governance as a microcosm

The ideological divide manifests clearly in AI governance. Beijing’s strategy, as frequently expounded by Xiao Qian 肖 仟 Tsinghua University, Institute for AI International Governance, urges collaboration and development: open-source models, Global South access, ’development-centrism’ over ’tech-centrism.’ America stresses competition and restriction: maintaining technological supremacy through export controls, closed-source models, and building alliances to prevent technology outflow.

This fundamental split—open versus closed, inclusive versus exclusive—exemplifies Li Shimo’s broader tension between multipolar inclusivity and unipolar hegemony.

fragmentation and policy uncertainty

What emerges is not ideological unanimity but fragmentation of previous certainties. President of the China Foreign Affairs University, Wang Fan’s 王凡 concept of ’transition periods’—where existing power structures are disrupted but new stable orders have not emerged—captures the moment. Beijing seeks to reform rather than overthrow the existing global order, promoting ’community with a shared future for humanity’ whilst maintaining strategic autonomy.

Coherent policy outcomes from this intellectual ferment remain unclear. Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Security and Strategy, Tsinghua University, and Military analyst Zhou Bo’s 周波 is sceptical about summit diplomacy—arguing there will be no Yalta 2.0 (1945 conference that created the post-war map) dividing spheres of influence. He dismisses the proposition that high-level meetings between major powers will lead to a new, stable geopolitical settlement. For Zhou, the current, fragmented world order and the nature of modern great-power competition suggest fundamental limits to grand strategic bargains and large-scale, binding agreements on dividing global influence.

Zhou’s public dissent represents a notable advance on monolithic PRC orthodoxy—the previously unified official line. This internal splitting of strategic thought now mirrors the ideological fission Li Shimo argues is occurring on the global political stage.

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assertive PRC analysts

Li Shimo 李世默 (Eric X. Li) | Chengwei Capital, Founder and Chairman

Shanghai-based venture capitalist, political scientist, and public intellectual, Li is among the most prominent defenders of the legitimacy and effectiveness of the PRC political system. Educated in the US, he leverages a fluent command of Western political discourse to challenge the universal applicability of liberal democracy systematically. His central argument, popularised in his viral TED Talk, ‘A tale of two political systems’, asserts that the PRC one-party system is superior because its structure allows for ‘self-reinvention’ and ‘meritocracy’, which have delivered stability, unprecedented economic growth, and poverty alleviation—a form of ‘accountable democracy’ without elections. He contrasts this with what he views as the divisive, rigid, and often paralysed nature of multi-party systems in the West. He is a steadfast voice for a strong, singular Chinese model, and his commentary usually frames US policy toward China as ‘irrational rivalry’.

Li holds a BA in Economics from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Stanford University, before returning to China to complete a PhD in Political Science from Fudan University. In 2000, he founded Chengwei Capital, an evergreen venture capital firm. Li is the co-founder of Guancha.cn (Observer.com), a highly influential nationalist news and commentary website that has become a major platform for intellectual nationalism and critique of Western liberalism. He is also affiliated with the Chunqiu Institute and the China Institute at Fudan University, leveraging these platforms to promote the Chinese governance model both domestically and to a global audience.

Zheng Yongnian 郑永年 | Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Advanced Institute for Global and Contemporary China Studies, director

Renowned PRC political economist and geopolitics generalist Zheng is an authority on PRC and US politics, foreign policy, East Asian security and globalisation. He maintains an overall orthodox nationalist stance while offering carefully calibrated critiques of central policies. Notably, Zheng has expressed scepticism regarding the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), arguing that it is ‘oversold’ as a grand strategy. While supporting it for Global South development, he critiques its overly ambitious branding, which risks Western geopolitical resistance and anxiety. He urges a restrained, focused implementation to mitigate risks, such as debt-ridden projects, and to ensure the BRI meets local livelihood needs.

Zheng has built a distinguished academic career spanning China, the US, and Singapore. After a stint as a lecturer at Peking University (1988–90), he began his long affiliation with Singapore, first as a Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute from 1997 to 2005. He then briefly served as the Founding Research Director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham (2005–08), before returning to lead the EAI at the National University of Singapore as its Director from 2008 until 2020. Zheng is recognised as an influential scholar and public commentator on PRC governance and geopolitics. He holds an MA in Political Science from Peking University and a PhD in Political Science from Princeton University.

Jin Canrong 金灿荣 | Renmin University of China, School of International Studies, Distinguished Professor

One of the PRC’s most influential and increasingly nationalist and hawkish public intellectuals, Jin contends that the United States is disappointed by its failure to transform the PRC and that its rising power means the historical policy of ‘hiding and biding’ is no longer practical. On Taiwan, he adopts a firm, pessimistic stance, arguing that Beijing must ‘prepare for the worst’—namely, a potential conflict over the island—even if the notion of US disengagement remains a minority view in Washington. He has explicitly stated the likelihood of Chinese leadership moving toward ‘armed unification of Taiwan by 2027’, emphasising the shifting military balance in China’s favour.

Jin Canrong was trained entirely within the PRC elite system, earning degrees from Fudan University, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Peking University. Following a fact-finding trip to the US and fifteen years at CASS’s Institute of American Studies, he joined Renmin University of China’s School of International Studies in 2002, where he is currently a Professor and Associate Dean. He is a state-honoured ‘Chang Jiang Scholar’ and a recognised policy adviser, frequently commenting for mass media and solidifying his position as a key voice in PRC geopolitical discourse, above all on US-China relations.