China once envied America — Now US is seen as an 'empire in decline' under Trump

For decades, China viewed the United States with admiration and resentment, seeing America as a country of wealth and technological sophistication, The New York Times reports. Now, under President Donald Trump, China sees America as in decline, and as a catalyst for China’s superiority.

“Thank Trump” is the title of a Beijing think tank report that argued that Trump’s policies — on immigration, tariffs, attacks on allies and on the American political establishment — have strengthened China.

“At this turning point in history,” the authors of the report wrote, “what we hear is the heavy and haunting toll of an empire’s evening bell.”

Brookings Institution researchers found that the term “American decline” in official Chinese sources “nearly doubled” in 2025, the Times reports.

For China, anti-America propaganda is plentiful, thanks to Trump’s “erratic decision-making in both domestic and foreign policy.” The Times points to images in the U.S. of immigration raids, the Minneapolis shootings, and political infighting that “circulate widely on Chinese social media alongside triumphant commentary about American dysfunction.”

An education consultant in China who advises families on overseas studies says once 80 percent of students looked to the U.S. in hopes of an Ivy League education. Now, he surmises, that number is roughly 45 percent.

“The America that represented wealth, freedom and institutional confidence feels like it belonged to a different era,” he told the Times.

Perhaps paradoxically, the Times reports that Trump losing Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives would benefit China. It would force Trump to turn his attention to foreign policy, which would create more space for U.S. compromise with Beijing.

The Chinese government’s official language toward Trump, one study showed, is far less confrontational than it was toward President Joe Biden, because “Trump’s transactionalism is something Beijing understands and can work with.”

Chinese strategists believe that not pressuring Trump will work in China’s favor.

“Beijing can do better by sitting back while the Trump administration fumbles,” the Times reports.

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