Donald Trump is copying the wrong things from China

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump rarely passes up an opportunity to praise Chinese President Xi Jinping. Over the years, Trump has regularly buttered up China’s leader, calling him “brilliant”, “perfect” and “fierce”, and averring that “there’s nobody in Hollywood like this guy”.

During his second term, Trump has gone further, directly copying elements of Xi’s China. When the American president announced his tariffs in April, his choice of “Liberation Day” sounded, to my ears, after working for years in China, more like Beijing’s terminology than that of a capitalist superpower.

While Americans speak in terms of freedom and liberty, it is the Communist Party that describes its victory over the Kuomintang as the “war of liberation”, delivered by the People’s Liberation Army.