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There is arguably no leader Trump admires more than Xi Jinping
The Observer
|May 03, 2026
Xi Jinping is a dictator who has crushed all dissent, purged most of his senior military officers and been accused of committing genocide.
China allows no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly and no press freedom. It is, in other words, the very opposite of a liberal democracy. Yet there is arguably no leader Donald Trump admires more than Xi.
It’s the autocracy that attracts him. A few weeks before his reelection in 2024, Trump told the podcaster Joe Rogan: “The press hates it when I call President Xi ‘brilliant’. Well, he’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. He’s a brilliant guy whether you like it or not.”
In 2018, just after Xi changed the Chinese constitution to abolish term limits, Trump mused admiringly that Xi was now “president for life... I think it’s great. Maybe we'll give that a shot some day.” He has called him “a very good friend”, “a strong guy” and said they “love each other”.
That the US president admires authoritarian leaders more than democratic ones is no longer a shock. He praises Vladimir Putin, then castigates Volodymyr Zelensky; he coos over the royals of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE while mocking Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz.
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