Contra Trump
佯裝川賊
Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true;
Real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real.
無為有處有還無
假作真時真亦假
— The Story of the Stone 石頭記, trans. David Hawkes)
Trump imitators have flourished in the United States since the late 1990s and from Trump Year Zero (aka 2016), Saturday Night Live has featured a bevy of them: Shane Gillis, Phil Hartman, Darrell Hammond, Jason Sudeikis, Taran Killam, Alec Baldwin and James Austin Johnson. My own favourite ‘Trump’ is Sarah Cooper, a New York-based comic who came to fame for her lip-sync impersonations of the president during his first term in office. Cooper hung Trump out to dry by mouthing his own words:
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On Halloween 2024, we joined Randy Rainbow, one of America’s most artful political satirists, to mark the crescendo of the US presidential election. Taking as his theme Xanadu, Olivia Newton-John’s 1980 hit song, Randy warned that MAGADU — a country ruled over by MAGA, Make-America-Great-Again Republicans — would be ‘a place where nobody wants to go’. MAGADU — Kubla Khan, Xanadu & the 2024 American presidential election ended up being the first chapter in our series Contra Trump — America’s Empire of Tedium.
In this chapter in the series, we introduce Ryan Chen 陳瑞, aka ‘Brother Rui’ 瑞哥, a commercial spin doctor based in Chongqing who swept to online fame in March 2025. Chen’s performances reached something of an apogee as a result of his encounter with ‘Hyperthyroid Bro’ 甲亢哥 — IShowSpeed — an American YouTube streamer who was touring the PRC. Chinese Trump, a PR huckster who mocked the vainglorious inanity of the US President via not-so-flattering imitation on RedNote and Instagram, was a fortuitous match with IShowSpeed, a hyperbolic twenty year-old trickster with a reputation for misogyny and sexual harassment, newly tolerated aspects of Trump 2.0 bro culture.
Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff fiasco on 2 April 2025 further boosted Chinese Trump’s global profile, something that was further helped by a statement made by a Ministry of Commerce spokesperson on 11 April:
The ratcheting up of tariffs on China has become a game, one with no practical economic significance. However, it does serve to expose further America’s bullying weaponisation of tariff policy and has ended up as little more than a joke.
美方對華輪番加徵畸高關稅已經淪為數字遊戲，在經濟上已無實際意義，只會更加暴露出美方將關稅工具化、武器化，搞霸凌脅迫的伎倆，並淪為笑話。
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In my 1996 study of Mao’s posthumous cult, I touched on Mao impersonators in China, an anodyne crowd of lookalikes who generally stuck to the canonical script of the leader’s words. I also remarked on the Mao doppelgänger that secretly serves him to this day. As I wrote at the time:
To ensure the reliability and appropriateness of the medical procedures undertaken to maintain Mao’s body in a presentable form (How much water should be retained in the corpse? At what levels should the cocktail of preservatives be kept? And so on), it was deemed necessary to find a ‘standard body’ 標準體 on which to experiment. The task to enlist the unwitting services of a suitably proportioned corpse fell to Xu Jingxian, the pro-Maoist party leader of Shanghai, a city that was ideologically proximate to the wishes of the leadership even though physically at an appropriate remove from the political centre. In his memoirs, Xu recalls that it was necessary to bring forward the execution of a criminal on death row so that such a ‘standard body’ could be procured at short notice. While today actors specialising in playing Mao on stage and screen might come and go, in death the corpse of that nameless double still shadows the Chairman so that, to distort the Bard, ‘age cannot wither him, nor custom stale’.
In Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium there is no public speculation about what will happen ‘after a hundred years’, that is, after Xi has gone to meet Marx. Such topics as Xi’s health, plans for his autumn years and his successor might be hotly debated in private, but taboo in a country that depends nearly entirely on one man’s well being and state of mind. The result is what we have referred to as the absurdities of China’s locked-in syndrome. Performers in China — from garrulous cross-talk wits to stand-up comedians — are mindful of the unstated rules of lèse-majesté that surround the person of the Chairman of Everything. Regardless, sotto voce mockery of Emperor One Direction although stifled has not been silenced.
With its admix of braggadocio and nod-and-wink humour, Ryan Chen’s is also a voice from The Other China, that irrepressible (although often repressed, co-opted or collaborationist) aspect of the Chinese world both that predates Party rule and that will continue to flourish long after the Communists have quite the stage.
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In March-April 2025, Ryan Chen and IShowSpeed were the online cosplaying avatars of Sino-American relations. Speed streamed his adventures in China at a time of renewed bilateral tension and Chen’s success immediately encouraged wannabes and imitators of all kinds. As the trans-Pacific grift continues, all that America needs is a flood of Donald Trump knock-offs that are made in China. But, if the trade winds change their direction, Chinese Trump may well go bust. Even then, no harm no foul; after all, that will only be Chinese Trump’s first bankruptcy. His American idol has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection no fewer than six times.
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
23 April 2025
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Further Reading:
- Larry David, My Dinner With Adolf, The New York Times, 21 April 2025
IShowSpeed’s Encounter with Ryan Chen
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Ryan Chen: a Chongqing Profile
Meet China’s viral Donald Trump impersonator
who nails the US president’s accent
Sarah Keenlyside
31 March 2025
When a middle-aged man from Chongqing with flawless impressions of Donald Trump began appearing on people’s Instagram feeds around the world, it wasn’t long before he went viral. It’s exactly this kind of incongruity (Chongqing? Trump?) that can skyrocket a talent to fame on the internet.
Chen Rui, known online as @trumpbyryan and by his English name Ryan, doesn’t just have the United States president’s hand movements down pat – in some respects that’s the easy part – but he’s nailed Trump’s cadence so perfectly it’s hard to believe he’s not a native speaker.
“Folks, you’re in Chongqing CHAI-na,” Chen says in one video as he lifts the camera for an aerial view of the crowded pavement behind him, his thumb and index finger pinched together in a classic Trumpian gesture.
“Look at this, it’s 6.30pm Friday, the busiest hour of the week, and you’re at Guanyinqiao, the most crowded spot of the city. Look at the size of the traffic. So many people, so many cars, bumper to bumper, barely moving. Some say it’s bad. You know what I say, I say it’s incredible.”
The superlatives, the rising and falling pitch, the self-important intakes of breath – it’s all spot on. You really would be forgiven for thinking he’s an American expat masquerading as a local – but he’s not. So who is he?
He’s 100 per cent Chinese and has never been to America
Chen often refers to himself as a typical Chongqing native. A fan who accosts him at a local hotpot restaurant in one video claims one of the reasons he loves his content so much is because Chen “really embodies the straightforward character” of the city. But what’s most impressive is that Chen has never studied abroad or been to the US – though he does admit to working overseas at one point. “I started out as a pretty ordinary person just learning English in China,” he explains, adding that he “slowly honed” his spoken English to get it to the level it’s at now.
His day job is as a marketer
Chen’s 9-5 sees him working at the largest private design institute in Chongqing “handling their marketing and business”, according to one clip. He says he began shooting videos last summer and was pleasantly surprised when they started to gain traction. He’s also been tapped by the local tourism bureau to promote the region to foreigners. At least half of his content plays like a love letter to the cities he’s in. “I feel so safe. Tremendously safe,” he opines in one clip about Chengdu, and can be seen showing American influencers around Chongqing’s Hongyadong and sampling various hotpot restaurants in others.
America’s TikTok ban gave him a boost
With most of his content originally posted to native app Douyin, then to RedNote, it was America’s TikTok ban – and the resulting “TikTok refugees” – that gave his profile a boost earlier this year. Taking advantage of the influx, he posted videos on the platform teaching the digital migrants everything from Chinese slang to Spring Festival customs. “Chinese Trump teaching me their language on this app,” wrote one American Gen Z user below one of his RedNote clips. “Definitely wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card, lol,” another chimed in.
His Chinese fans want to learn English from him
The quality of his Trump impression isn’t lost on his Chinese followers either, who flock to his accounts to get practical tips on speaking English like a native. “In the long run I still want to do some English training,” he says, “because a lot of fans privately message me asking me to explain how I learned English.”
He’s decided not to pigeon-hole himself as a comedy influencer
His physique may add to the authenticity of his POTUS impression, but Chen wants to change it – and take his followers along on his weight-loss journey. “I think I need to lose weight,” he is seen saying in a recent video (spoken in his real voice). “Nowadays when I go out to shoot something, even walking makes me tired. I think health should come first. And now that I’ve gradually gained some fans, I feel I should be a role model. After all, being unhealthy isn’t a good image. So I’m planning to start a weight loss channel this year.”
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Source:
- Sarah Keenlyside, Meet China’s viral Donald Trump impersonator who nails the US president’s accent, South China Morning Post, 31 March 2025
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The Master of Self-parody
‘Melania and I will be going to the funeral of Pope Francis, in Rome. We look forward to being there!’
— Donald Trump, Truth Social, 21 April 2025