Contra Trump
“天選之子”
This year — 2026 — marks the sixtieth anniversary of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. As we noted when launching China Heritage a decade ago:
In 1966, Mao observed that his personality was a mixture of contradictory elements. There was the self-assured sense of destiny and confidence that led him to challenge and overturn earlier leaders of the Communist Party, confront Chiang Kai-shek and lead the Chinese revolution. This was, he said, an expression of his Tiger Spirit 虎氣, something that was in constant interplay with his Monkey Spirit 猴氣, one that was skittish, paranoid and unpredictable. The Monkey was always ready to take on the Tiger with devilish glee. In the last two decades of his life, Mao’s China reflected this deep-seated contradiction as the country lurched between authoritarian control and anarchic confusion. What for the Great Helmsman was his life force writ large would rend the fabric of the society he ruled and threatened everything he had worked to achieve.
In December 2016, we readily thought of Mao, China’s unique agent of chaos, when contemplating the inauguration of Donald J Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.
‘Only when All Under Heaven is thrown into great disorder can a new kind of order emerge’ 天下大亂達到天下大治 Mao remarked to Jiang Qing, his wife, in private. The chaos that Donald Trump, the 47th US president, and his second administration visit upon both America and the world promises to be far more consequential than even Mao’s best efforts.
Here, we mark the moment with a calligraphic comment by Liu Chan 劉蟾 on the annual World Economic Forum held at Davos, Switzerland, in January 2026. It is fitting that Dasheng’s understanding of the unfolding drama is suitably ‘biblical’.
For other work by Dasheng Liu Chan, see The Other China.
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
24 January 2026
God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth
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God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth —
- First He sent the waters of a flood;
- Then He rained brimstone and fire out of heaven;
- Finally, He sent Donald Trump and let him survive an assassin’s bullet so that he could complete the task of destruction and impose the punishment of humankind.
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The Davos Forum of 2026 seemed in effect an announcement that the old world order had collapsed. The member states of NATO and the European Union witnessed this unravelling while those whom will presumably profit mightily from the unfolding scenario were far to The East.
Contemplating this somewhat wretched denouement, I decided to transcribe ‘The Chosen One’, an old composition, to record the moment.
— Dasheng Liu Chan, 24 January 2026
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The wickedness of man was great in the earth
God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
— Genesis 6: 5-7
Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous
Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;
And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. …
And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.
— Genesis 19: 24-28
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