Is President Donald Trump all that backward?

The western world, its intellectual circles and academia, have barely a good word for President Donald Trump. To them he is almost a misogynist (look how very few women there are in his administration!), white supremacist (he wants to build the wall, stop the influx of immigration and deport illegal aliens!) and a proponent of autarchy (for him it is preferable to have the businesses inside the country rather than having them outsourced abroad). All the progressive ideas of the western left, like the gender parity in offices, a welcoming (guilt-ridden) culture and a free flow of people seem to have received a hit once Donald Trump has been voted into the highest office.

Since it is the American and European left i.e. epigones of the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, that keeps complaining about the current United States administration, it would not be amiss to have a closer look at their leftist Asian counterparts or comrades in arms, and where should one search for them if not in the People’s Republic of China?

A cursory look at the highest echelons of the Chinese communist party reveals that there are very few women, none at the top positions. There don’t seem to be any gender quotas in the People’s Republic though the country officially pledges allegiance to the egalitarian philosophy which posits that there are no essential differences between the biological sexes and so they can be and are replaceable.

Source: Number of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members in China from 2008 to 2015, by gender (in millions)¹⁾Statista.

How about the openness of borders, the diversity in the Middle Kingdom? Well, the Chinese society is homogeneous: one would have a hard time trying to see there blacks²⁾Being Black in China, National Geographic 2017-02-06.or, for that matter, whites, either in government circles, in the military or among the rank-and-file citizens. There are no influxes of Vietnamese or Filipinos, Koreans are Cambodians, to say nothing of Africans or Arabs.³⁾Why China Isn’t Hosting Syrian Refugees, FP 2016-02-26.Christianity is barely tolerated and Islam is restricted to regions where it was implanted a long time ago. Chinese are not being reeducated into cultivating in themselves the guilt complex and display “racism” when they come into contact with foreigners: In China, as a black blogger comments, “the good jobs, usually go to white people, senior management, etc. The worse jobs to non-white foreigners, usually. […] Chinese are risk averse, and their general attitude about blacks is they are good at sports, but not good workers (due to lack of intelligence and/or wild behavior). Many people might literally be afraid of you, especially women.”⁴⁾What is it like to be black in China?, Quora 2016-05-18.

And then economy. A free flow of capital and labour? Well, no. The Chinese leadership follows a century-old principle that it is there to serve its own people rather than please the outsiders, put their own country up for grabs and provide materially for anybody who has a whim to settle down in China. Foreign businesses are facing regulatory restrictions⁵⁾Foreign Businesses In China Are Increasingly Concerned About The Future, Forbes 2016-06-26.because China wants to curb the capital outflow.⁶⁾Foreign companies in China hit by new exchange controls, Financial Times 2016-12-06; Foreign Firms in China Say They Are Less Welcome Than in the Past, Fortune 2017-01-18; Why foreign companies are shutting shop in China, CNBC 2017-02-02.Outsourcing China’s own production? Not on the table unless… within the country.⁷⁾China’s New Worry: Outsourcing, Forbes 2016-07-07.Items made in China are flooding the world market and bringing income.

Well, this is the policy that is being implemented by the left (Left!). Why is it so divergent from the leftist slogans that the West is bowing to? Maybe we are dealing with a national kind of communism like in North Korea, Vietnam, the Soviet Union in its last decades or the Comecon countries? Leftist ideas and nationalism? Tuck, says a western left-leaning intellectual. But then, the Chinese are Marxists and non-white. How can then the left criticize them? That’s really a hard nut to crack.

The Chinese middle-class and intelligentsia despise the European left.⁸⁾The curious rise of the ‘white left’ as a Chinese internet insult, openDemocracy 2017-05-11.Why, then President Donald Trump should appear to the American and European left as a paragon of progress, a beacon of the advancement of humanity. There are worse countries after all.