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Law in Contemporary Society
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Fascist Superpowers: China Today, America Tomorrow?-- By YuruiWu - 20 Feb 2025 In the earlier stages of the first Trump presidency, I would often joke to my friends that Donald Trump would love to be president of China. As much as it was an attempt at humor amid a bleak reality, I believed there was some truth to it. Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, had amended the Constitution to allow himself an unprecedented third five-year term, effectively making himself an emperor for life. Overseas commentators noted that he had amassed more power than any Chinese leader since Mao by purging adversaries and locking up critics. The front pages sang his praises every day, even though it seemed like he did little of consequence most days of the year. Trump must be envious of the endless power and praise Xi bathes in. If he were running China, he would never have to deal with critical media or an independent judiciary, let alone the celebration his racist and misogynist rhetoric might receive in such a tightly controlled media environment. But here in the U.S., he could be stopped—or so I thought.Anti-Fascist InstitutionsTrump was first elected a year after I came to the U.S. for school from Beijing. I would tell my host family how depressing it felt that just as I had managed to escape one authoritarian regime for nine months each year, another authoritarian leader was rising in my adopted home. Xi’s power grab in China and Trump’s rise in America coincided with my political awakening. At the time, I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what I was witnessing. Now I believe the more accurate term to describe the leaders of these two global hegemons is “fascist.” Timothy Snyder identified one characteristic of fascism—shared by Stalinist Russia and Trump’s America—as the dissociation between language and its meaning. The more I learned about Chinese society after I left, the more I saw how official slogans and public discourse were devoid of substance. This disassociation is central to what has long set America apart from China. Here, two institutions have long served to preserve the integrity of meaning: the press and the judiciary. When injustice occurs, journalists uncover the truth. When elected officials lie, reporters fact-check and challenge them. After Trump was first elected, a renewed public interest in journalism—reflected in subscriptions and ratings—signaled a collective belief in the power of truth. The courts, too, pushed back. Lawyers and judges invoked the meaning of words in the Constitution to defend civil liberties. While some judges worked to reinterpret or dilute those words, judicial review managed to block many of Trump’s most harmful initiatives. For a time, the system worked. In China, by contrast, Xi has turned both institutions into instruments of the state. The courts serve his power; the media functions as propaganda. The tools that could have anchored truth have instead become mechanisms for consolidating personal rule. Trump would love to be Xi. It’s no surprise that during his presidency—and increasingly in his second campaign—he has intensified attacks on journalism and the courts, the two institutions that can still resist his attempts to dissociate language from meaning. At the same time, Trump has incorporated into his machine an army of right-wing new media personalities, oftentimes replacing principled journalism on his loyal base’s screens. They have become the party mouthpieces akin to what Xi relies on in China.The Party Behind the ThroneYet Trump still wishes he had one key piece enjoyed by Xi: complete control of the party. Neither Trump nor Xi rules alone. Their cults of personality are dependent on their party’s loyalty to them, and their party’s grip on the public. With a two-party system, despite the fascist trajectory it is heading to, America should be more resilient to cultish leaders than China in principle. However, the Republican party, just like the Chinese Communist Party, has played the role of enablers for Trump. In both cases, the party infrastructure has been hollowed out to serve the ambitions of one man. While Xi exerts repressive control over the CCP, fortified by direct command of the military, Trump’s power, however expansive, is subject to cracks within a more open political system. In the U.S., a handful of Republican senators could derail any major assault on democratic norms. Trump’s inability to command absolute party loyalty and the decentralized nature of American institutions still leave space for resistance. By contrast, dissent within the CCP remains almost unthinkable without risking immediate reprisal.Amnesia nation?Last semester, during Professor Liebman’s talk on the Chinese legal system and its authoritarian transformation, I asked him if there was a way out of the downward spiral. He replied that perhaps Xi will one day die, and a more liberal generation of leaders might emerge. I responded that this was too hopeful. Snyder’s observations helped me articulate my pessimism: when language is persistently divorced from meaning, the capacity for society to even imagine a different future disappears. One generation raised in this environment may forget; the next may never know. That’s what happened to Tiananmen Square. It’s what’s happening with the covid lockdown. Rage flickered, hope surfaced, but without a shared language for truth, public memory faded. If society learns to live comfortably under fascism, why expect future leaders to choose anything else? Unlike China, the U.S. still has meaningful resistance: constitutional norms, institutional autonomy, and an electorate with a real voice. Trump’s defeat in 2020 and the temporary backlash within his party proved that the machinery of fascism here is incomplete. But his comeback and Xi’s continued popularity show how seductive these movements can be, especially when parties become vehicles of personal domination rather than democratic deliberation. The danger isn’t just in the leaders, but in the parties that carry them, echo their rhetoric, and strip language of its meaning. China today shows us what happens when fascism wins. If we want a different tomorrow for America, we must not fall into amnesia.You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. 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