And short answer … NO.
From my post the other day, noting a major article in the South China Morning Post that likely reflects thinking in Zhongnanhai -- China's Kremlin. Or perhaps informs it. And therefore needs fact-checking and debunking where necessary. Which I'm going to do here as a PSA. As they say: “Buckle Up!”
Some clips, indented in purple, and my comments after each:
“America’s transformation under President Donald Trump has parallels with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the last years of the Soviet Union…”
No. I was in the Soviet Union just before Gorbachev's perestroika. It was an obviously failing socialist economy. Brittle. Autarkic. The main GUM Department store had pyramids of pickled cabbages in tins, on display. That was it. You could get a Coke-bottle's worth of vodka for just a few pennies. But not Coke. It was still the place where packs of Marbloros got you taxis. Jeans bought you night in a hotel.
Trump's America is a strong, post-industrial market-driven technological powerhouse. Trump andmini efforts to re-shore industry will make it even stronger. There's simply no comparison between the two countries. Between one strong capitalist country and one crumbling communist empire.
“ Zheng argued that Trump had altered US party politics – the foundation of American democracy – reshaping the Republican Party through populism and leaving no consensus between Republicans and Democrats.”
Nah. To the extent that there's "no consensus" where does that stem from? As soon as Trump was in power for the second term, the Dems began fighting. They fought against the border closure and against deportations (both supported by 80% of voters). They became violent when Trump’s DOGE began cutting government expenditure to reduce the huge debts — racked up most rapidly by Biden’s team. They sent teams of aging hippies to burn, torch, vandalise and destroy Teslas and Tesla facilities, because Elon Musk was in charge of the DOGE effort. As we speak they and their Antifa proxies are resisting, violently, every move of the Immigration Customs Enforcement efforts of Federal officers to find and deport violent illegal immigrants. They’ve voted to shut the government down. Go figure.
"Consensus"? dream on Dems... you're the ones that created the nightmare.
“Globally, the US used to play a leading role in promoting and expanding American-style democracy, Zheng said, adding that the global backsliding of democracy was “unprecedented”, with the US retreating from its role.”
“Zheng described Trump as showing little interest in American democracy itself …”
“As an example, he cited Trump’s push to end the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the American government’s humanitarian aid coordinating body and, until recently, one of the world’s largest such agencies.”
“According to Zheng, Trump was also largely undermining the core of US constitutional governance – the separation and balance of powers – pressuring the legislative and judicial branches and fundamentally altering the system.”
Nah. No way Trump is "undermining... constitutional governance". Every Executive Order that I've read has a statement: ".... to the extent permitted by law". And every time there's a SCOTUS decision around an EO, the Trump Admin has followed it.
The very fact of the number of Federal Judge injunctions against Trump EOs shows the resilience of the system. "Undermining or altering" is a myth—courts/Congress check him (180+ blocks, bipartisan bills).
All up this article of professor Zheng's is a hatchet job. I get the idea that he came up with a nice notion — America is just like pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union — and shoehorned his “evidence” to fit his conclusion.
Which, sadly, the majority of SCMP readers seem to have bought into. And that the leaders in Beijing may also sip and sup and digest. But it's wrong. And to the extent that it's wrong, it will lead to miscalculations by Beijing. They will, if they believe this nonsense of the academic Zheng, judge America to be more brittle, weaker and more vulnerable than it is. And that in turn could lead to dangerous miscalculations.
Here's hoping that a blog in Hong Kong can find its way to Zhongnanhai and give them a different perspective!
