China Thought America Was Declining – Then Trump Changed The Equation

The latest dramatic back-to-back shows of U.S. global might and power in Venezuela and Iran, likely has the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) questioning their strongly held conviction that as China was rising to global leadership, the United States was in permanent decline.

In recent years, China’s leadership and public have pointed to social problems and weakened ties with traditional allies as signs of waning American strength and even a nation in crisis.

“The East is rising and the West is declining,” China’s communist leader Xi Jinping has said numerous times since 2021, referring primarily to China and America.

This nationalistic thinking, based partly on propaganda and the CCP’s own Leninist predisposition toward seeing the American system as doomed to fail, has been a key component of China’s modern identity and has fueled their gargantuan efforts to overtake the U.S. on the world stage.

Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection solidified this view, with a sharp rise in discussions about American decline in Chinese media.

Brookings Institution fellow Jonathan Czin and Allie Matthias, a senior research assistant at the institution wrote only days ago, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP):

After the 2024 election, several Chinese academics described the U.S. as regressing, or in a ‘crisis’, due to the rise of populism, the decline of American democracy, the residual effects of the 2008 global financial crisis, and racial and economic inequalities.

Sadly, for them, President Trump has quickly put a kibosh on their faulty, self-serving narrative.

The president’s determined focus on Making America Great Again (MAGA) by rebuilding the country’s economic strength, manufacturing and industrial base, and more favorable foreign trade balances, while closing the borders, removing millions of unvetted illegal foreigners, and protecting the homeland are already paying noticeable dividends.

In just one year, America is more secure and increasingly more economically and politically confident, even as Democrats and the left wail and scream otherwise.

Zheng Yongnian, a Chinese political scientist, government adviser who heads the website of the Institute of International Affairs, Qianhai, recently admitted on its site that China had “underestimated” Trump.

“Our understanding of ‘Trumpism’ remains profoundly superficial,” Zheng said. “In his view, the U.S. military is merely a capability and means to achieve his objectives,” Zheng added of Trump.

“Despite numerous issues within its political and social spheres, we absolutely must not underestimate America’s capabilities,” Zheng said.

But Trump’s forceful and effective use of U.S. military power within just the past two months, on opposite parts of the world, has done the most to shake the Chinese leaders to their core.

While China’s state-controlled media is portraying impressive U.S. military interventions as the actions of a rogue state, and rising homelessness, civil unrest and other social problems are still signs of serious failures in American governance, unofficially, doubts about this official view are increasing.

The U.S. military’s swift decapitation this weekend of Iran’s leadership and rapid domination of the country’s airspace (defended by advanced Chinese and Russian technology) and continual pummeling of its military, at minimal human cost in American lives, is the most recent demonstration of America’s global military reach and power. (RELATED: Trump Addresses Possibility Of Ordering Boots On The Ground In Iran)

It is even more significant coming just weeks after U.S. naval and military forces neutralized Venezuela’s similarly Chinese and Russian equipped military and captured the country’s narco-dictator with zero U.S. casualties.

No other nation on Earth could accomplish these massive military operations in two different hemispheres nearly simultaneously.

Zhu Feng, dean of Nanjing University’s school of international studies, said, according to SCMP, that the U.S. operations in Venezuela and Iran showed that the American armed forces had the “swiftest” application of military technology in the world.

Zheng noted that, “America’s war-making capability depends solely on its will to deploy such power.”

Those two incidents showed not only that Washington’s military strength remains “superior,” but also that its “methods of warfare have further evolved,” according to Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.

Shi added that, in addition, despite disagreements between the U.S. and its traditional European allies, America’s “diplomatic influence remains significant.”

This can also be seen in Trump’s reviving of U.S. leadership in its own backyard, Latin America best symbolized by his just launched new initiative the “Shield of the Americas.” (RELATED: Trump Calls For Latin American Support In Cartel Crackdown)

This effort is intended to coordinate military and security efforts among at least 13 participating nations to combat transnational criminal organizations, particularly drug cartels operating throughout the Americas.

As Zheng noted, in contrast to Chinese propaganda, “in reality, the U.S. retains formidable economic strength and possesses unparalleled military power globally.” And this makes a mockery of the Chinese view of U.S. decline.

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