Opinion | Could Chinese social media’s love of Trump turn tide of trade war?

Amid the raging debate about what another Trump administration in the United States means for its trade and relations with China, there has been little mention of how the Chinese public and business community feel about the man who kicked off the trade war nearly seven years ago.

While we can only guess at how Beijing feels, many Chinese people, businesses and, indeed, investors actually favour Donald Trump. Given China’s sensitivity to public opinion and Trump’s well-known susceptibility to flattery, this might have major implications for how trade policies and negotiations pan out over the next four years.

To Trump’s detractors, it seems unfathomable that the groups he consistently badmouths or the people in countries like China, which he is so outwardly antagonistic towards, could like him. Outgoing President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party is still flummoxed after losing the election to Trump.

In my daily conversations with the business community in China, there is both an appreciation of his business-driven mindset and a fatalistic indifference to his barrage of tariffs on Chinese imports.

There has also been plenty of time to get accustomed to these tariffs and other trade restrictions. Unless the companies have been blacklisted outright, such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE, they seem to be able to find workarounds and still do a roaring business in the US.