The Financial Times, a British newspaper, published a long commentary article on July 4th local time, comparing the delirium of American politics under Trump's leadership with China's firm and solid policies. The article emphasized that the technocratic governance of China contrasts sharply with the "post-truth" pantomime-like spectacle of the United States, which is hard to ignore. The US is giving space to China, and the world order is further tilting towards China.

Author Adam Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University, as well as a contributing editor for the Financial Times and a writer for the Chartbook newsletter. "Alligator Alcatraz" originally referred to an illegal immigrant detention facility in Florida, USA. In the title, the author uses it to refer to what he sees as the current style of governance in the US: the policy of "crocodile tyranny" in the US has created space for China to showcase itself.

Tooze wrote that on the morning of June 25th, Chinese Premier Li Qiang attended the opening ceremony of the 2025 Summer Davos Forum in Tianjin and delivered a speech. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the US was experiencing a "political earthquake"—Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, unexpectedly defeated Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York State, in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City.

Although the speech did not mention the US, the manuscript was clearly conceived against the backdrop of today's global turmoil and the 2008 financial crisis. Seventeen years ago, when the Summer Davos Forum was first held in Beijing at the invitation of the Chinese government, it was precisely when the news of Wall Street's collapse spread around the world. As the crisis erupted, China suddenly became a new pillar of global stability.

Tooze believes that after entering the 2010s, the world order has irrevocably tilted towards the East. Today, it is difficult not to have the impression that the world order is further tilting towards China.

The chaotic situation under Trump's rule in the US contrasts sharply with the calm and proactive atmosphere emanating from Beijing, both in style and content.

The Chinese speech emphasized historical logic and the unstoppable trend of globalization with a calm attitude, citing precise growth data down to decimal points, and even paused to clarify the currency unit used for the referenced Chinese export records. In contrast, the US political sphere has fallen into a state of delirium.

When Trump called Mamdani "a complete lunatic," the "establishment" figures who claimed to uphold centrist common sense only exacerbated the situation. A senior Democratic commentator said that freezing the rent of about one million regulated apartments in New York for a year was tantamount to "dropping a bomb."

Tooze sarcastically remarked that this makes one wonder how residents of Tehran, Gaza, or Tel Aviv would react to such metaphors. At the same time, the debate in Congress over Trump's signature bill, the "Big and Beautiful Act," seemed absurd. For Trump's nationalist advisor Stephen Miller, adding billions of dollars to the budget of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was a matter of the survival of Western civilization.

Certainly, China also faces macroeconomic challenges. However, unlike Europe and the US in 2008, this adjustment has not evolved into a systemic crisis. If China maintains an annual growth rate of around 5%, it will be one of the most successful "soft landings" in economic policy history. Even if China needs further stimulus, it can be expected that although its policy process is slow, it will ultimately produce clear results.

In contrast, calling Washington's so-called "policy-making" a "process" is already a form of flattery. Facing the macroeconomic consequences of the "Big and Beautiful Act," the White House spokesperson even refrained from modifying statistics or adjusting models. Their response is more like a revivalist denial: as long as Trump says that growth will rise and deficits will fall, it will be so.

Similarly, regarding the global threat of climate change, the direction of China's climate policy remains to be observed. There is currently hope that China's emissions have reached their peak, and both China and the EU may submit ambitious "nationally determined contributions" for emission reduction targets before the UN General Assembly in September. In the US under Trump, global warming has become a taboo topic, and Republicans have done everything they can to block the transition to green energy.

The contrast between China and the US is striking. The US today is a reality TV-style politics of the post-truth era.

The author finally reflected that merely recounting these comparisons sounds like exaggerated caricatures. But as the Chinese say, history sometimes resonates in strange ways. When the voice of reality becomes sharp and discordant, and "Alligator Alcatraz" has become a synonym for immigration policy, we should honestly face it all.

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Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7523927409620484647/

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