Is Donald Trump drawing inspiration from China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping?
Like Xi, Trump aims to expand the territorial borders of his country. In Trump’s case, he wants the United States to annex the Panama Canal, Greenland, and the independent nation of Canada. The U.S. president-elect is also keen to rename familiar geographical terms, like the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. That, too, is very Xi-like.
Xi’s imperialist ambitions include seeking control over the independent nation of Taiwan, parts of the independent nation of Bhutan, a section of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India, and the Depsang Plains on the northwestern border with India.
In addition, Xi maintains that China has jurisdiction over a group of uninhabited islands off southern Japan. Japan claims them as the Senkaku Islands; China claims them as the Diaoyu Islands; and Taiwan claims them as the Tiaoyutai Islands.
Plus, Xi’s government insists it has full control over the Paracel/Xisha Islands claimed by Vietnam in the South China Sea. And Xi insists that China owns the Spratly Islands, which are claimed in full or in part by Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia.
Canadians, of course, are overwhelmingly opposed to annexation by the United States. That’s because most Canadians treasure their free healthcare, abhor U.S.-style gun violence and school shootings, and want to retain their public pension system. Moreover, as a constitutional monarchy, Canada’s head of state is King Charles III. Nobody has asked him what he thinks of ceding his head-of-state status to Trump.
Trump could echo CCP’s language
Meanwhile, Canadian courts have ruled that Indigenous peoples retain title and Aboriginal rights in a post-Confederation Canada. However, there is no guarantee that an increasingly discredited U.S. Supreme Court would go along with this.
Trump could echo the language of the Chinese Communist Party in its dealings with Hong Kong by promising “one country, two systems” in return for Canada joining the United States. That way, Trump could pledge that Canada would retain autonomy over healthcare, Indigenous rights, official languages, education, and other areas over a 50-year period following annexation by America.
But what’s to stop Trump or his successors from copying Xi’s crackdown in Hong Kong? Xi simply amended a national security law to apply to Hong Kong, imposing de facto dictatorship.
There are also lessons in the People’s Republic of China annexing Tibet following the Chinese Civil War in 1949. After Chairman Mao launched the Battle of Chamdo against Tibet in 1950, the two sides signed a Seventeen Point Agreement the following year. This supposedly granted regional autonomy to Tibet.
Tibet is anything but autonomous
However, the official head of state, the Dalai Lama, rejected the Seventeen Points Agreement. Eight years later, he fled into exile in India. China still describes his 1.2-square kilometre former nation as the Tibet Autonomous Region, but it is anything but autonomous, according to Amnesty International.
“In February, five UN experts wrote to the Chinese government raising concerns about labour transfer programmes under which millions of rural Tibetans were allegedly removed from their homes and traditional livelihoods and placed in low skilled, low paid manufacturing jobs,” the human rights group stated in its 2023 country report on China.
In March 2023, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights “urged an immediate halt to non-voluntary resettlement and relocation” of small-scale farmers and herders in Tibet.
“It also raised concerns about reported campaigns to eradicate Tibetan culture and language, the closures of schools teaching in Tibetan and other minority languages, and assimilation programmes including the coerced residential school system imposed on Tibetan children,” Amnesty International stated.
As an imperial power, U.S. already has some “autonomous regions”. They include the commonwealths of Puerto Rico and Northern Mariana Islands, as well as the territories of Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. By adding the autonomous regions of Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, Trump hopes to extend U.S. hegemony in ways that Xi could only dream of.
However, it’s not as easy as Trump waving a wand. Under the U.S. constitution, new states may only be admitted by Congress.
Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. Follow Charlie Smith on Bluesky @charliesmithvcr.bsky.social.
