Zhou Lian on Chinese Trump Supporters

Zhou Lian, “Three Myths Concerning Chinese Trumpists”[1]

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Zhou Lian (b. 1974) is Professor of Philosophy at Renmin University, and a well-known liberal intellectual.  The titles of recent articles published on Zhou’s Aisixiang page—“Individual Freedom and the Rise of Great Powers,” “Why Hayek was not a Conservative,” “The Quicksand State of Contemporary Chinese Political Culture,” and “Hayek and Rawls on Social Justice”—point to Zhou’s attachment  to classical liberalism. 
 
The text translated here was originally published in the Taiwanese journal Reflection 思想 in mid-April 2021, but then almost immediately published online in China.  The text speaks to the consternation and confusion Zhou has felt in watching fellow Chinese intellectuals—friends and acquaintances, most of whom are fellow Liberals—double down on their support for former U.S. President Donald Trump, even after Trump’s claims of election fraud and his incitement of the riot on Capitol Hill on January 6.  During the week after Joe Biden took office, a group of these Chinese intellectuals, including well-known mainstream figures such as Gao Quanxi 高全喜 (b. 1963) and Liu Junning 刘军宁 (b. 1961), founded a Chinese-language e-zine entitled Trumpism 川普主义, suggesting that the enthusiasm for Trump among Chinese intellectuals will not immediately fade now that Trump has left office.  The point of Zhou’s text is to try to make sense out of this.
 
Zhou ascribes Trump’s ongoing popularity among certain Chinese intellectuals to three myths:  the myth that Anglo-Saxon Christians created America; the myth that the United States is descending into socialism; and the myth that the only long-term hope for China is that Trump remain in power to restore Western civilization.  Most of Zhou’s discussion—which aims to be neutral and dispassionate, since he addressing (perhaps former) friends and colleagues—repeats themes sounded in similar discussions available elsewhere on this site (see here and here).  Zhou notes for instance that Samuel T. Huntington’s identification of the American spirit with its Anglo-Saxon roots—the source of much Chinese support for Trump’s agenda—is historically inaccurate and, even if true, would mistakenly conflate origins with essences.  He admits that some Americans are demanding something like European democratic socialism, but insists that this is a far cry from collective ownership of the means of production.  He tries to defend a reasonable identity politics by arguing against cultural monism. 
 
Zhou’s arguments are convincing to me, but then I am not a Trump supporter.  The larger question, which Zhou cannot really even attempt to answer honestly in his text is:  how and why has Donald Trump come to loom so large in the minds of these Chinese intellectuals?  Why are they worried about the dilution of America’s Anglo-Saxon heritage?  Why do they care about the decline of Western civilization?  Trump’s populism in the United States is fueled by populist rage—largely White and rural—against the liberal, coastal elites and their secular values.  The rage is not particularly difficult to understand, although the fact that Trump came to play the role of the savior is more difficult to fathom.  But what does it mean when this is transposed to China?
 
Zhou hints at this in his third myth:  saving China through indirect means 曲线救国.  The phrase was invented during the anti-Japanese War period, and had two meanings.  The first was fairly straightforward propaganda:  “We don’t have the strength or the resources to fight Japan head on, so we must mobilize all positive forces and persist creatively to arrive at a final victory, if indirectly.”  The second was an ironic spin on the first.  When Wang Jingwei 汪精卫 (1883-1944) set up a collaborationist regime in South China with the support of the Japanese military during the war, claiming that he was protecting the Chinese people, tongue-in-cheek critics accused him of “saving the country through indirect means.”
 
Zhou wisely avoids exploring this topic in depth.  I wonder if he does not mean something like this:  “As a liberal intellectual, I share your concerns.  I, too, would like the United States to remain strong and for liberal democracy to flourish and triumph throughout the globe.  All of those who argue on behalf of democracy in China are using ‘indirect means to save the country.’  At the same time, when you transfer your faith in democracy from a set of beliefs to a demagogue like Trump, not only do you fracture the liberal community within China, but you open yourselves up to accusations of treason à la Wang Jingwei.  Please be careful, for your sake and mine.”  
 
Favorite Quotes
 
“I have attempted to locate a genuinely valuable problématique in the arguments of the Trump supporters, doing my best to understand what they are thinking, and to examine our differences on a factual and logical basis. I have an almost naive idea: even if we can't be fellow travelers, we can at least follow the same path, in the sense that both sides should try to understand our similarities and differences with the help of reason and as much empathy as possible, so that even if we finally go our separate ways, we should understand which part of the road we traveled together, where and for what reason we parted company, maintaining enough decency and grace among us to avoid misbehavior and rudeness.”
 
“In addition to traditional economic issues, Chinese Trumpists' fear of liberalism also arises from cultural, moral, and religious issues. Between 2016 and 2020, many Chinese Trumpists experienced a transformation from Hayek-believers to Kirk-believers. This means moving from classical liberalism to traditional conservatism and the religious right, and from political and economic issues to religious morality and even more abstract civilizational issues. Of course, becoming a Kirk-believer does not mean completely abandoning Hayek's theoretical resources, as the Wang Jiaoxun’s characterization that ‘the American spirit is Christianity plus limited government and capitalism’ suggests, and Chinese Trumpists continue to be highly wary of the welfare state and socialism on the one hand, while interpreting the contemporary political divide in Europe and the United States as a battle between the sacred and the secular on the other.”
 
“Some Chinese Trumpists try to defend themselves, saying that they are ‘situational conservatives’ by arguing that they are conserving China's liberal and religious traditions, but this seems to me to be a contradiction in terms, because you cannot conserve a tradition that does not exist. It is true that we can take a magnifying glass to the classical writings and political practices of the Chinese tradition and find some trace references to ‘freedom’ and ‘religion,’ but this is far from enough to prove that China had such traditions. In this sense, to construct Chinese conservatism according to the template of American conservatism is nothing but slavish imitation.”

“Among all the myths of Chinese Trumpists, the idea of ‘saving China through indirect means’ perhaps deserves the most sympathy, but I am not going to delve into this sensitive topic, and will offer only two thoughts: 1. Desperation can seriously interfere with one's sense of reality and future expectations, in the way that seriously ill people put their faith in the wrong medicine.  2. All Chinese feel sad, as they look on helplessly, unable to take action.”
 
Links to other texts on this site

For texts related to the theme of Black Lives Matter, click here.

For texts related to the theme of democracy, click here.

For texts related to the theme of Donald Trump, click here.
 
Translation
 
I have always objected to the use of the term "Trump fans" to refer to all Trump supporters, because it is hard to imagine that the more than 73 million American citizens who voted for Trump are all ardent fans of Trump. One voter in Pennsylvania told reporters, "When I went to vote for Trump, I was really dragging my feet."  He is dissatisfied with Trump’s policy and statements concerning the coronavirus epidemic, but he finally supported Trump because he grew up Republican, which left him feeling extremely contradictory. 

In a slightly earlier interview, the Chinese-American writer Ha Jin 哈金(b. 1956) expressed similar views. He believes that Trump has many character defects, has no ideals and values, and is at best a pragmatist, but that choosing Trump over Biden was nonetheless a rational trade-off. However, after white supremacists stormed the Capitol building on January 6, Ha Jin felt that that Trump was undermining liberal democracy and completely withdrew his support for him. This shows that even in the highly polarized 2020 election, Trump's supporters have only reached a consensus in the sense of voting for Trump, but not a consensus concerning reasons to vote for Trump. 

In addition to obsessive Trump fans and supporters who "hold their nose" and vote for him, there is also a group of self-proclaimed Trumpists, who support Trump on the grounds that the United States is facing a full-blown crisis created by liberalism and the Democratic Party, and that Trump and the conservative values and ideals he represents are the only hope for saving America and reviving Western civilization. Just a few days before the U.S. election officially came to an end, a Chinese e-journal entitled Trumpism [2] opportunely appeared, backed by a number of prominent Chinese intellectuals, including both former Liberals (mainly classical liberals in the Hayekian sense) and some Mainland New Confucians and Christians. I am filled with intellectual and emotional confusion about these old friends and acquaintances. But I have no intention of exploring their character traits and personal experiences; such topics are too intimate and give rise to suspicions concerning personal attacks or my motivations. Nor do I intend to deal with patently absurd ideas such as conspiracy theories.
 
I have attempted to locate a genuinely valuable problématique in their arguments, doing my best to understand what they are thinking, and to examine our differences on a factual and logical basis. I have an almost naive idea: even if we can't be fellow travelers, we can at least follow the same path, in the sense that both sides should try to understand our similarities and differences with the help of reason and as much empathy as possible, so that even if we finally go our separate ways, we should understand which part of the road we traveled together, where and for what reason we parted company, maintaining enough decency and grace among us to avoid misbehavior and rudeness.
 
I believe that the rise of Chinese Trumpism is inextricably linked to three myths.
 
Myth #1: The Bible made America: Only a return to the Anglo-Protestant tradition can save America and Western civilization.
　
Myth 2: America is becoming socialist: Whether in terms of economic arrangements or culture and morals, America is sliding irrevocably into socialism.
 
Myth 3: Saving China through indirect means: Only if Trump stays in power can we maximize the potential for change in China.
 
Although the weighting of these three myths and the way they are arranged will differ according to the individual in question, I believe they are the ideological keys to help us understand Chinese Trumpism. Due to space limitations, I will focus my analysis on the first two myths and leave the third one for other knowledgeable people to explore.
 
One, The Myth that the Bible Made America
 
The most widely known version of the myth that "the Bible made America" comes from the political scientist Samuel T. Huntington (1927-2008).  In his 2004 book Who Are We?  The Challenges to America’s National Identity, Huntington suggests that the principles of American faith—the values of freedom, equality, democracy, civil rights, nondiscrimination, and the rule of law—are the product of a distinctively Anglo-Protestant culture. If Americans were to abandon Anglo-Protestant culture, it is unlikely that America could retain its prominence. Huntington believed that if the United States had been originally settled not by English Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics, it would not be today’s United States of America, but rather a version of Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.
 
Chinese Trumpists have universally accepted Huntington’s narrative.  Following the conservative fervor produced by Trump's election, and especially with the translation into Chinese of such works as Jerry Newcomb's The Book That Made America: How the Bible Formed Our Nation (original publication, 2009, Chinese translation 2017), as well as Russell Kirk's two volumes, The Roots of American Order (original publication 2003, Chinese translation 2018), and The Conservative Mind:  From Burke to Eliot (original publication 2001, Chinese translation 2019), they have become more and more firmly entrenched in this view.

Even today, when the dust of the 2020 election has settled, the liberal scholar Xiao Sanzha 萧三匝  still points out in his article "Trumpism Has Already Won" that "the essence of Trumpism is, without any doubt, the conservatism derived from Burke, a conservatism that is concerned with both human rights and the foundation of human rights—the sovereignty of God."  In this sense, Xiao Sanzha argues that although Trump lost, Trumpism will surely win because it is the sure way to restore the glory of the city on the hill.
 
As a myth, "the Bible created America" commits the following three errors.  First, it stubbornly clings to the logical error that the beginning determines everything and the origin determines essence.  Second, it overgeneralizes, and inappropriately reduces the history of the founding of the United States to the story of the Anglo-Protestant founding of the city on a hill.  Third, it is self-defeating, detached from actual context and conditions in a strategic sense, and those who believe this myth are in danger of morphing from conservatives to radicals.
 
Professor Zhao Dunhua 赵敦华 (b. 1949) has pointed out that in the debate between universalism and particularism, many scholars often confuse the two issues of  the "content of ideas" and the "social conditions that produced those ideas.” These scholars assume that values or knowledge acquire a decisive essence ("social condition," external "existence," or "inner truth") at the moment of birth, and that there is a necessary relationship in which the past determines the present and the present determines the future.

In my view, Huntington and the Chinese Trumpists make the same type of error, beginning from the assumption that "origins create and sustain essences" and claiming that the characteristics of Anglo-Protestantism are the source of the enduring tradition of the American spirit, but this is nothing more than what Zhao Dunhua calls "the dogma of the creation of essence,” or, in my words, a false attribution, because the "content of thought" is not the same as the "social conditions that produced it."
 
To take the concept of individual rights as an example, although its intellectual origin can be found in twelfth-century texts related ecclesiastical law, a long and complex historical evolution was required for the implied meaning of the original text to develop an explicit meaning with a practical application, ultimately reaching its final form as a basic concept through which we understand reality. Over the course of this process, individual rights, a core concept for understanding and constructing our modern complex society, completely cut the spiritual umbilical cord with its Christian progenitors. Similarly, even if we acknowledge that the modern values of freedom and equality are derived from Christianity, it is no longer possible to ground them in specific religious traditions in today's world of value pluralism, and any effort to "return to the roots" is mere wishful thinking.
 
The argument that the Bible created America is also not consistent with the genuine history of the United States. Looking at the religious demographics of the United States at the time of its founding, Anglo-Protestants built churches in Massachusetts, while German Protestants settled in New York and New Jersey, the dominant force in Maryland was Catholic, and the settlers in Rhode Island were Baptists. It is not difficult  to see that Anglo-Protestants were never dominant, but were rather in competition with other denominations.
 
Moreover, the values and political practices initially espoused by the Anglo-Protestant community were, in terms of the governance of their own communities, authoritarian rather than liberal, advocating the unity of church and state, not believing in or promoting human equality, and being extremely intolerant of heresies and people of other religious faiths. As the historian Qian Mansu 钱满素 (b. 1946) has pointed out, it took a century and a half of complex historical changes for the Protestants in the North American colonies to complete the process of conversion to liberalism. "The American Revolution accomplished three revolutionary historical tasks simultaneously: the transformation from colony to independent country, from kingdom to republic, and from theocracy to secularism." Thus, it is difficult for us to see this historic feat in any meaningful sense as the unique contribution of the Anglo-Protestant tradition.
 
It is worth noting that although Newcomb, the author of The Book That Made America, believes that "the founding of America began as a Christian nation" and repeatedly upholds "America's Christian roots," he nonetheless emphasizes throughout that he "is not under the illusion that today’s United States is a Christian nation" and "does not believe that America should be a theocratic country.”  Newcomb states that "I believe that the founders of America wanted religious institutions to be separate from the institutions of the state so that there would never again be any one Christian denomination placed above the other…I believe the founders of America wanted religion to play a role in public life (on a voluntary basis)."  

The above statement makes it abundantly clear that for Newcomb, The Book That Made America is a rhetorical expression, the meaning of which is to emphasize the importance of Christian elements in American history and public life, which is not the same as an intention to abandon a set of modern political values such as separation of church and state and freedom of religion established by the American Founding Fathers. In contrast, a series of claims by Chinese Trumpists and ultra-conservative evangelical Christians, such as their support for Trump's call to repeal the Johnson Amendment [3], are closer to a literal claim that "the Bible created America" and that without Christianity there would be no American glory or future.
 
This insistence that the Bible literally “created America" puts Chinese Trumpists at risk of self-defeat, because it means that while they claim to be conservatives, they are actually radicals.  Just as Huntington pointed out, at first a conservative is simply a critic of existing society, or perhaps a reactionary, but gradually he becomes more radical, and as time passes, the ideals of the reactionary become less and less connected to any past social reality. They romanticize the past, and eventually he begin to support a return to an idealized "golden age" that never really existed. This reactionary is indistinguishable from other radicals, and often exhibits characteristics typical of all radical mentalities.
 
The fact that modernity traces its origins to religion is acknowledged in the history of ideas, something on which there is a growing scholarly consensus, and the place and influence of Christianity in American history and reality is hard to ignore. Even today, in the 21st century, there is a need to reexamine the function and role of religion in public life, rather than insisting on total secularization. Nonetheless, as noted above, none of these considerations provides a reasonable defense of the myth that the Bible created America.
 
Two, The Myth of that America is Turning Socialist
 
If we take Europe as reference point, it is not difficult to conclude that, in the 18th century, the United States was more liberal than Europe, while in the 21st century, the United States is more conservative. This conservatism is reflected in a series of issues such as religious beliefs, taxation, welfare protection, and immigration policies. Despite this, for Chinese Trumpists, America is experiencing or is about to experience a crisis of socialism.  Let me address this issue from three different perspectives: economic, religious, and cultural.
 
Socialism or social democracy?
 
On November 4, 2020, Professor Wang Jianxun posted a text on his friend circle—“The spirit of America is Christianity plus limited government and capitalism"—and added the following note: "The vote count is underway, and there is no way to know who the victor will be. To a large extent, the vote in this election is a choice between limited government (small government) or unlimited government (big government), the free market or economic regulation, the sanctity of private property or an attack on the rich, low taxes or high taxes, adherence to Christianity or atheism, traditional marriage or same-sex marriage, freedom under order or freedom to do as we please, and capitalism or socialism."
 
What is interesting is that, while he admitted that "this generalization is simplistic," Wang nonetheless insisted that "in big picture terms, this is the situation." His fundamental judgment is that "the Democratic Party and its followers are comrades in arms in the same trenches as the adherents of socialism, no matter how much they try to obscure this relationship. This has become increasingly clear over the past few years. This election is of global concern because the United States is a bellwether, a leader in this anxiety-inducing moment, and its future determines the future of Western civilization, and even the future of humanity."
 
Wang’s statement is not only overly simplistic, but also commits several logical errors: it sets up absolute dichotomies, it engages in exaggeration and over-generation, and it pushes logic to extremes (engaging in “slippery slope” logic). An example of the fallacy of "pushing logic to the extreme," is Hayek’s well known 1944 book The Road to Slavery, in which he criticized the policy of the British welfare state policy in just such terms. Hayek's arguments have had a wide and far-reaching impact in Chinese intellectual circles, both because of the painful historical lessons of the first thirty years of socialist China and because the practice of "pushing logic to the extreme" is difficult to falsify through real-life experience.
 
In 1956, twelve years after the publication of The Road to Slavery, Hayek responded to his critics by saying that although the British welfare state policy had not, for the time being, created anything resembling a totalitarian state, the fundamental thesis of the book had not been shaken by it because "the change caused by extensive government control is a psychological change, a change in the character of the people. It is necessarily a slow process, one that takes not a few years, but probably a generation or two."
 
Hayek's fears are not entirely unfounded; welfare policies can indeed create outcomes the opposite of what was envisioned, such as harming equality of opportunity and failing to foster a sense of responsibility and independence among citizens. In fact, the political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2001) criticized the welfare state for creating "a depressed and sullen underclass," and the philosopher and feminist Nancy Fraser (b. 1947) argued that affirmative action might not help to solve distributional inequities, but rather lead to a false image of the underprivileged as “people who are inherently flawed and impossible to satisfy.” Yet none of these concerns are reasons to oppose welfare policy wholesale; they are simply reminders to better balance theory and reality. As some scholars have pointed out, Hayek's critique of socialist economic planning was thorough and devastating, but contributed little to refuting the social democracy that developed after the 1970s.
 
Not long ago, Kevin Williamson (b. 1972) pointed out in the conservative magazine National Review that the current Republican Party's accusation that the Democratic program "socialism" is an overreaction, based on feelings of polarization and lacking clear substance.  I agree with Williamson's judgment. In my opinion, a more accurate assessment is that the United States is moving toward a European social democracy. As long as there is no planned economy and public ownership of the means of production, and private property rights and freedom of speech, thought, and religion are ensured, the overall leftward trend of American society has nothing to do with the socialism that Hayek feared. The "logic of the slippery slope" appears to be nothing more than an attack on straw men.
 
From Hayek to Kirk
 
In addition to traditional economic issues, Chinese Trumpists' fear of liberalism also arises from cultural, moral, and religious issues. Between 2016 and 2020, many Chinese Trumpists experienced a transformation from Hayek-believers to Kirk-believers. This means moving from classical liberalism to traditional conservatism and the religious right, and from political and economic issues to religious morality and even more abstract civilizational issues. Of course, becoming a Kirk-believer does not mean completely abandoning Hayek's theoretical resources, as the Wang Jiaoxun’s characterization that "the American spirit is Christianity plus limited government and capitalism" suggests, and Chinese Trumpists continue to be highly wary of the welfare state and socialism on the one hand, while interpreting the contemporary political divide in Europe and the United States as a battle between the sacred and the secular on the other.
 
It must be acknowledged that conservatism is not the same as reaction, nor is conservatism an American disease, but rather part of the American tradition. The relative stability of American politics for the vast majority of the past two centuries has depended on a dynamic balance and mutual constraint between conservative and progressive forces. But on the other hand, as the political scientist James R. Kurth (b. 1938) has argued, "American conservatism" has always been an "oxymoron," and the Europeans who came to the New World in the early days of the United States were there to create a new world, not to conserve the old one. They were first and foremost European liberals in every sense of the word, advocating free markets, low taxes, and free choice in economics, separation of church and state and freedom of worship in religion, and opposing military conscription.
 
From 1787 to 2021, American conservatism went through three main stages of development.  In the first stage, from the early founding of the country through the 1930s, American conservatism was essentially classical liberalism.  In the second stage, from the Roosevelt New Deal in the 1930s through the 1960s, American conservatism consisted of a collection of three main forces, namely, staunch anti-communists, classical liberals, and traditionalists, the latter two represented by Hayek and Russell Kirk, respectively. Hayek explicitly rejects the label of conservative, and if we insist on calling him a conservative, his ethos is closer to that of the first of American conservatism, since it is the classical liberal tradition that he seeks to defend. In contrast, Kirk is an outlier in terms of the American conservative genealogy, closer in conception to 18th-century European conservatism than to conservatism in the native American sense.

But it is worth thinking about that it was Kirk who became the representative figure of the third stage of American conservatism. Beginning in the mid-to-late 1960s, American conservatives waged a culture war, successively targeting economic issues, pornography, abortion, and moral decline, and after more than half a century of fermentation, finally in 2016 the power of Trump brought anti-identity politics into play, the roots of which we can trace back to Kirk, who played a most profoundly influential role in it.
 
We must position Kirkian conservatism accurately. Huntington distinguished among three types of conservatism: situational, aristocratic, and autonomous. According to this distinction, if Edmund Burke was a conservative, he was a situational conservative, not an aristocratic or autonomous conservative, for whether it was the British Whig system, the American democratic system, the French autocracy, or the Indian Hindu system, Burke defended them all equally, "simply because he had a strong desire to defend all existing institutions, regardless of where and how they are challenged." In contrast, Chinese Trumpists and Kirkists are closer to aristocratic conservatism and autonomous conservatism in that they seek to restore and secure the privileged status of particular groups (e.g., Anglo-Protestant groups) on the one hand, while asserting that conservatism has a universally valid and autonomous conceptual system on the other.
 
Some Chinese Trumpists try to defend themselves, saying that they are "situational conservatives" by arguing that they are conserving China's liberal and religious traditions, but this seems to me to be a contradiction in terms, because you cannot conserve a tradition that does not exist. It is true that we can take a magnifying glass to the classical writings and political practices of the Chinese tradition and find some trace references to "freedom" and "religion," but this is far from enough to prove that China had such traditions. In this sense, to construct Chinese conservatism according to the template of American conservatism is nothing but slavish imitation.
 
Typical of Kirk's adherents is the assertion that political issues are ultimately religious and moral rather than economic.  In the 1980s, Kirk launched a fierce attack on his former allies, the classical liberals, belittling them as "metaphysical lunatics" and "political psychopaths,” and also pointed out that “the most important dividing line in modern political science, as the political philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) reminds us, is not between totalitarians on one side and liberals (or classical liberals) on the other; it is between all those who believe in a transcendental moral order, and all those who mistake the life and death of the individual for the entirety of existence and purpose."
 
Chinese Trumpists are not only in the same boat as Kirk in terms spiritual substance, but are rowing even harder. Some of them have a tendency to believe in the omnipotence of faith, as if by standing on the high ground of religion, they can reduce highly complex modern social issues to matters of faith and easily gain a special ability to grasp the truth of history and the nature of politics. But, as Socrates warned the Athenians, the word “wisdom” is so weighty that it can belong only to God, and man is at best a lover of wisdom. Christians, as believers in God, should recognize the smallness and insignificance of man more than do atheists, instead of making statements and judgments on behalf of God and mistakenly thinking they have become gods because of their belief in God.
 
Cultural Pluralism or Multiculturalism?
 
One of the main reasons for the Chinese Trumpists' conversion from Hayek to Kirk is their belief that the changing demographics will inevitably lead to the permanent loss of the "white nation" and "Christian civilization," and that it is therefore necessary to fight against liberalism on issues of race, gender, immigration, abortion, homosexuality, and religion.
 
Political Science Professor Cong Riyun 丛日云 (b. 1956) attempts to distinguish between cultural pluralism and multiculturalism. According to his definition, cultural pluralism "recognizes the reality of multicultural coexistence and respects the particular cultures of various minority groups, religions, disadvantaged or marginalized groups on the basis of constitutional consensus, while at the same time insisting on the leadership of the mainstream culture in the context of multiculturalism and promoting the integration of various cultures into the mainstream culture." According to Cong, "Respect and tolerance for such multiculturalism are the right things to do in liberalism. It is also a value that Trumpian conservatism cherishes, so Trump will not challenge and undermine this kind of pluralism."

But multiculturalism is different in that it "shifts the emphasis to the value of cultural pluralism, believing that cultural pluralism itself is worth pursuing, and to this end, it strongly deprecates mainstream culture and appreciates, promotes, and even worships the cultures of various minority groups, religions, and socially disadvantaged and marginalized groups. In this way, the mainstream culture of America has been seriously eroded and weakened, thus bringing about the crisis and decline of civilization. From this perspective, multiculturalism is a corrupting factor of Western civilization, and its popularity is actually an act of self-abuse, self-harm and even the eventual suicide of Western civilization. It is this type of multiculturalism that Trump opposes. One of the implications of his desire to make America 'great again' is to stop this suicidal behavior and allow American civilization to revive its self-confidence and regain its glory."
 
There are a number of factual errors and conceptual confusions in Cong's analysis. As just mentioned, Cong believes that cultural pluralism "insists on the leadership of the dominant culture in a multicultural landscape and promotes the integration of various cultures into the dominant culture." A closer examination of his views reveals that he does not differ from Huntington's basic position.  As Cong himself points out:
 
"We know that a civilization is a living entity whose culture is its soul or spirit and whose material vehicle is a specific ethnic group, the nation or race that creates and passes on that civilization. You can't expect another people to pass on your civilization...The Trumpists are worried about the demographic changes brought about by an influx of immigrants. They are worried not only about terrorism, crime, welfare burdens and competition for labor, but also about the future of traditional white Christian American culture, the possibility that this will be usurped by other peoples."
 
Thus, in Cong Riyun's view, what he calls "promoting the integration of various cultures into the mainstream culture" is in essence "turning the many into the one." This is not advocating cultural pluralism at all, but rather cultural monism. To this day, there is every reason to believe that Trump is not a conservative in the true sense of the word, and that he supports not cultural pluralism but white supremacy. If "Make America Great Again" is equivalent to a return to white Christian culture, then this approach is not only contrary to the founding ideals and beliefs of the United States, but also will inevitably bring oppressive and exclusionary consequences for minority groups.
 
Although Cong’s critique of multiculturalism is partially valid, it is still biased and simplistic. For example, in his text he mentions that "a young immigrant of Syrian origins applied to Stanford University and in his application essay he merely wrote ‘Black Lives Matter’ a hundred times." According to Cong, this is comparable to Chinese students who turned in “blank test papers” during the  Cultural Revolution, and he further noted that "one of Stanford University’s explanations for admitting this student was that he would increase multiculturalism on the campus."

The above statement is full of factual errors. A little fact-checking on the Internet will show that this young man, Ziad Ahmed, is not turning in empty test papers, but rather a student that excels in all areas. He answered the last question in the application form—“What matters to you and why?” —after submitting all other required documentation. He repeated “Black Lives Matter” a hundred times because he wanted to truly express his innermost desires as a young activist. When the young man shared his behavior on Twitter, a spokesperson for Stanford University confirmed that he had been given a letter of acceptance, but did not acknowledge any connection to this particular behavior.
 
Cong Riyun might counter that even if he made a factual mistake, his concern about the overall trend of American political culture still holds true: "When you embrace this kind of pluralism, it goes beyond proper boundaries, creates a parallel politics, and turns the cultural melting pot into a cultural mosaic.  The overall quality of the nation declines, and the country loses its inner cohesion, eventually leading to social disintegration and the decline of civilization."
 
To make sense of all of this, we must clarify the theoretical demands and practical goals of genuine multiculturalism at the conceptual level. According to the widely held views in Western academics, multiculturalism advocates acknowledging and respecting differences, rather than abolishing them through universal abstract sameness, and for that reason “opposes assimilating the members of minority groups in the ‘melting pot’ of mainstream culture, and supports the ideal that members of minority groups can maintain their distinctive collective identities and practices. On the question of immigration, proponents emphasize that multiculturalism contributes to, rather than detracts from, the process of integrating immigrants into society; multiculturalism policies provide fair provisions for the integration of immigrants."
 
The key words here are "assimilation" and "integration." The difference between the two is that "assimilation" takes a dominant culture—in the case of Huntington or Cong Riyun, "Anglo-Protestant" or "white Christian culture"—as the standard, and eliminates minority cultures from it. This line of thinking appears to respect cultural and value pluralism, but in fact it is a search for a cultural monism that values the group more than the individual. In contrast, "integration" means, on the one hand, fully respecting the fact that cultural pluralism is valuable in its own right, for which it is necessary to resort to laws and policies to preserve cultural diversity and specificity. 

On the other hand, multiculturalism does not believe that all cultural values are equal, that there is no superiority or inferiority, nor that they can be naturally harmonized, but that social unity can be achieved only through active integration. In the specific case of American society, the standard and direction of integration are not directed toward a specific religion or ethic group, but instead toward more abstract and general values and beliefs, such as individualism, democracy, constitutionalism, the rule of law, equality, etc., and it is on the basis of these substantive concepts that it is possible to respect cultural diversity while ensuring social unity and national identity, and to truly achieve the goal of "being an individual within the group."
 
Having said this, it is easy to find that the fallacy of Cong Riyun's dichotomy lies in the fact that the "cultural pluralism" he advocates and the "multiculturalism" he opposes have both undergone different degrees of conceptual distortion and deformation in his version of them.   The “cultural pluralism" he agrees with is actually a cultural monism that values the group over the individual; the "multiculturalism" he opposes is actually a cultural relativism that multiples difference.  True "multiculturalism" tries to find the "unity within diversity,” a task that values the "unity" more than does cultural relativism and respects the "diversity" more than does cultural monism.
 
Of course theory is one thing and reality is another.  Even if we can sort out the differences between multiculturalism and cultural relativism at a conceptual level, we must admit that there is always a danger of the former slipping into the latter in terms of real consequences. In this regard, although I do not accept Cong Riyun's analytical framework and solutions, I share his concerns to a certain degree.

In fact, in the late 1990s the philosopher Richard Rorty (1931-2007) explored the negative effects of the cultural left on national identity in his Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America (1997), and after Trump's election in 2016, the political scientists Francis Fukuyama (b. 1952) and Mark Lilla (b. 1956), and the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (b. 1963), among others, seriously reflected on identity politics, political correctness, cancel culture, and new left-wing social movements. Will multiculturalism eventually slide into cultural relativism, leading to the fragmentation of American culture and thus the dismantling of the nation's common cultural foundations? These are all open questions that deserve serious exploration.
 
On the relationship between diversity and unity, South Carolina's senior Republican Congressman Lyndsay Graham said two thought-provoking things: "Diversity is an advantage, not a disadvantage." The other is "America is an idea, not a race." It is only with this understanding that conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, can reach a valuable consensus on immigration and multiculturalism.
 
Among all the myths of Chinese Trumpists, the idea of "saving China through indirect means" perhaps deserves the most sympathy, but I am not going to delve into this sensitive topic, and will offer only two thoughts: 1. Desperation can seriously interfere with one's sense of reality and future expectations, as when seriously ill people put their faith in the wrong medicine.  2. All Chinese feel sad, as they look on helplessly, unable to take action.
 
Three, Conclusion
 
As Tocqueville, the great observer of American democracy, noted 180 years ago, geography contributes less to American democracy than law, and law contributes less to American democracy than public sentiment. The 2020 U.S. elections have further torn American society apart, as one nation has split into two public sentiments, completely at odds with one another. In such circumstances, the burden of maintaining the democratic system and American identity falls on the law. In this regard, I agree that Trump and Republican supporters should collect all legally significant evidence and challenge the election results in court, provided, of course, that they respect the law and accept the results if they lose.
 
After the events of January 6, 2021, when white supremacists attempted to interfere with the Congressional certification of Electoral College votes by occupying Capitol Hill, a parody conversation was posted in a Friend Circle:
　　
“Is this a rebellion? No, Your Majesty, it's a revolution.

Is this a revolution? No, Mr. President, it's a rebellion.”

Was it finally a rebellion or a revolution? Was it unconstitutional or a defense of the constitution? A subversion of liberal democracy or a defense of liberal democracy? The 2020 election has not only torn apart an already polarized American political climate, but has also created an unbridgeable dispute in the Chinese intellectual community. People who once shared the same path have now parted ways, and what were once "political differences" have turned into "political conflicts.”
 
A "political disagreement," according to the political scientist Matt Sleat, means that both sides still share a set of political values and retain confidence in the ability of basic political arrangements (such as the constitution, the democratic process, and the political framework of the separation of powers) to resolve their differences, while a "political conflict " is an attempt by two parties holding opposing values to bypass democratic and legal means and resort directly to violence and revolution to solve problems, suppress their opponents, or even destroy their enemies.
  
It's a depressing conclusion, but I still choose to believe in the self-repairing ability of the American system and the self-reflective ability of the American people. I have always believed that for the healthy ecology of American politics, a Biden win is better than a Trump win, and a small Biden victory is better than a big Biden victory. A Trump defeat will allow the Republican Party and Trump supporters to calm down and seriously review the damage and destruction Trump has caused to conservative ideals and American politics, laws, and public sentiment over the past four years. A narrow Biden victory could allow the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and liberal intellectuals to reflect on why Trump still has so many supporters at a time when the coronavirus epidemic is raging, and on the partial legitimacy of their political opponents' point of view.

Some say that Trump's biggest problem was that he made both left and right worse. My only hope Biden can keep the left and right from going further down that road.

Notes

[1] 周濂, “华人川普主义者的三个迷思,” originally published in Reflection 思想, 42 (April 2021):  167-186, and added to Zhou’s Aisixiang page on April 15. 

[2] Translator’s note:  A screen shot of the cover of the first issue, with the names of the intellectuals supporting the publication, is available here.  For some reason, I am unable to locate the publication itself, although Zhou seems to be citing from texts published therein.

[3] Translator’s note:  The Johnson Amendment (1954) was an amendment to the tax code stipulating that churches who enjoyed a tax-exempt status must not engage in certain political activities, such as direct advocacy or fund-raising for particular candidates.  Although the amendment has been rarely enforced, Donald Trump, at a National Prayer Breakfast in 2017, vowed to "get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution."  Although couched in the language of freedom of speech, Trump presumably was attempting to unleash his evangelical supports to work for him more directly.