Ding Xueliang spent his early teenage years in China as a fervent believer and practitioner of Chairman Mao Zedong’s revolutionary ideals — but he never imagined those memories would one day be stirred by a sitting US president.

In 1966, at just 13 years old, the son of poor farmers became one of Mao’s Red Guards. He joined millions of young people across China to participate in the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long upheaval set off by an aging Mao to reassert his absolute control over the ruling Communist Party – with the stated goal of preserving communist ideology.

Nearly six decades later, Ding is a distinguished scholar of Chinese politics based in Hong Kong, with a PhD from Harvard and a career teaching about the catastrophic movement he embraced.

But in recent months, he has begun to see uncanny echoes of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in an unexpected place: Donald Trump’s America.

To be clear, there are profound, incomparable differences between the deadly violence and chaos unleashed by a dictator in a one-party state, and an elected president’s divisive attempts to expand executive power within a mature democracy.

“It’s not identical,” Ding said. “But there are certainly parallels.”

As Trump upends the very institutions, alliances, and free trade order that have underpinned America’s global dominance since World War II, some in China are reminded of their own former leader — one who wielded revolutionary zeal to tear down the old world more than half a century ago.

In articles and social media posts, Chinese scholars and commentators have drawn comparisons between Trump and Mao. Some referenced the Cultural Revolution – at times obliquely to avoid censorship; others highlighted Trump’s apparent appetite for chaos, and the rising signs of authoritarianism and personality cult within his administration.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has disrupted the federal bureaucracy – dismantling agencies, purging officials and slashing civil service jobs. He has waged a war on ideology that conservatives deem “woke” and attacked elite universities – including Ding’s alma mater Harvard – for “liberal indoctrination,” threatening to cut their federal funding. He’s also pledged to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and “put American workers first.”

And in the US president, Ding noticed what he said were striking similarities with the late Chinese chairman whom he once worshiped as a young Red Guard: despite their vast differences, they both share a deep contempt for intellectual elites, a strong mistrust of the bureaucratic apparatus, and a populist appeal aimed at farmers and blue-collar workers.

‘Imitating Chairman Mao’

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s Red Guards declared war against the “Four Olds” – old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas – to erase remnants of China’s pre-communist past. (It led to the widespread destruction of some of the country’s most valuable historical and cultural artifacts.)

That campaign stemmed from Mao’s long-held belief in “first destroy, then establish” – the idea that old systems, ideologies, or institutions must be demolished before new ones can be erected in their place.

Coming from an impoverished family, Ding eagerly took part in public humiliation rallies against teachers, intellectuals, government officials and others labeled as enemies of Mao’s vision.

“I was especially enthusiastic about the Cultural Revolution because I was born into a family of three generations of poor farmers — one of the ‘five red categories.’ At the time, I felt the Cultural Revolution was extremely important for us, it was wonderful,” he said.

But as China learned over a harrowing decade, it’s far easier to tear things down than to rebuild them. Mao’s violent mass movement shut down schools, paralyzed the government, shattered the economy, destroyed religious and cultural relics – turmoil that only subsided after the leader’s death in 1976. Historians estimate somewhere between 500,000 and two million people lost their lives.

Now, some Chinese are looking at that tumultuous chapter of their own history to make sense of the change Trump is unleashing in America.

Among Mao’s most ardent admirers, there’s a sense of pride that the US president appears to be borrowing from the revolutionary playbook of their esteemed supreme leader. One blogger likened Trump’s February tweet — “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” — to Mao’s iconic slogan: “To rebel is justified.”

“Trump is adept at imitating Chairman Mao. Trump is China’s true opponent,” the blogger concluded.

Other Mao fans cheered Trump for cozying up to Vladimir Putin’s Russia while snubbing Ukraine and Europe, said Wu Qiang, an independent analyst in Beijing who is studying Chinese perceptions of Trump.

Ever since his first term, Trump has earned the nickname “Chuan Jianguo,” or “Trump, the nation builder” among Chinese nationalists — a mocking suggestion that he is making China stronger by undermining America.

For some Chinese liberals, however, Trump’s sweeping expansion of executive power and attacks on press freedom, academic independence and the rule of law in the first 100 days of his second term have sparked disbelief, frustration and disappointment.

On Chinese social media, users voiced their disillusionment in the comment sections of US Embassy accounts, lamenting that America no longer resembles the ideal they once believed in.

“I always thought the US was a beacon to the world, standing for justice and fairness. But its recent actions have been completely disillusioning … Many Chinese people’s faith in America has been shattered!” said a comment on the US Embassy’s WeChat account.

Others made oblique references to Mao.

Underneath the embassy’s post celebrating Trump’s first 100 days in office, a Chinese user wrote: “Sailing the seas depends on the helmsman.” That’s the title of a revolutionary song eulogizing Mao, which became the popular anthem of the Cultural Revolution.

Another wrote: “The American people also have their own sun,” complete with a smirking dog emoji. Mao was extolled as the “red sun of China” at the height of his personality cult during the mass movement.

‘American-style Cultural Revolution’

For years, Chinese liberals have quietly warned of a creeping return to the Cultural Revolution under Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao. A devoted student of the “Great Helmsman,” Xi has steered China closer to strongman rule and curtailed individual freedoms in ways critics say are reminiscent of that era.

And so, it was all the more striking for some Chinese liberals to witness an authoritarian turn seemingly unfolding in Washington, which under former President Joe Biden had framed the US competition with China as “democracy versus authoritarianism.”

Less than a month into Trump’s second term, Zhang Qianfan, a constitutional law professor in Beijing, was already alarmed by the emergence of what he called an “American-style Cultural Revolution.”

“The Cultural Revolution was essentially a power struggle,” he said.

Mao was insecure about his authority, eroded by three years of famine caused by his disastrous “Great Leap Forward” industrialization campaign; he was also suspicious of the establishment built by himself, claiming that “representatives of the bourgeoisie” had sneaked into the party, the government, the army and the cultural spheres.

Similarly, Trump believes the “deep state” is out to get him. And like Mao, he turned to loyalists outside the establishment to reshape the system and bend it to his will, Zhang said.

“Mao unleashed the Red Guards to ‘smash’ the police, prosecutors, and courts, so that loyal revolutionaries could seize control of state machinery,” he said. “Trump brought Elon Musk and six young Silicon Valley executives into the White House under the banner of eliminating corruption, waste, and inefficiency — akin to the ‘Cultural Revolution Leadership Group’ entering the party’s central leadership.”

Zhang was equally unsettled by the growing signs of a personality cult in Washington.

Last month, when he saw a social media photo of a gold pin in the shape of Trump’s profile worn on the chest of Brendan Carr, chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, he initially thought it was fake news or a parody.

In China, such a badge carries heavy political symbolism. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s badges were worn ubiquitously by Red Guards and others as a public display of loyalty to the chairman and devotion to the revolution.

“During Trump’s presidential inauguration speech, Republican lawmakers all stood up and applauded with such fervor that it rivaled North Korea. These are deeply troubling signs,” Zhang said. “People are seeing all kinds of sycophancy in the US that would have once been unimaginable.”

Trump has even publicly flirted with the idea of seeking an unconstitutional third term, saying he was “not joking” and claiming that “a lot of people want me to do it.”

Mao ruled China until his death. Xi is serving a third term after abolishing presidential term limits in 2018 in a move praised by Trump.

‘Beacon of democracy’

All the parallels aside, the first 100 days of Trump’s second term are radically different from Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which devastated China, saw millions of people persecuted and resulted in more than 1.7 million deaths, according to the party’s own count.

Unlike Mao, Trump did not mobilize youths across America to form a nationwide, self-organized political movement. “The January 6 attack on the US Capitol was somewhat similar, but it didn’t take off – it did not become a national rebellion in the US,” said Ding, the former Red Guard.

To Ding, the two leaders also differ dramatically in their global ambitions.

“Whereas Mao’s Cultural Revolution had a grand goal for China to replace the Soviet Union and become the sole guiding force for the global proletarian revolution, Trump’s movement lacks such an ambitious, internationalist vision,” he said. “Instead, Trump has utterly damaged America’s image, credibility, and influence within the global camp of liberal democracies.”

In many ways, Trump is reshaping the global order. He has disrupted the transatlantic alliance – a cornerstone of Western security for decades – and pushed Asian allies to pay more for US protection. He also narrowed the focus of his global tariff war squarely on China, effectively cutting off trade between the world’s largest economies – until both sides announced a 90-day reduction in tariffs on Monday.

Wu, the political analyst in Beijing, believes Trump has a substantial base of support in China – larger than many might expect.

“The enthusiasm for Trump — from intellectuals and elites to ordinary people — reflects a deeper dissatisfaction with China’s current political system,” he said.

For many Maoists, Trump has sparked their renewed yearning for a political movement that can bring China closer to what they see as the social equality and ideological purity of the Mao era, Wu noted.

Some in the business community believe Trump’s radical approach can finally push China to enact the painful reforms it needs. To Wu, their support of Trump signals a symbolic gesture: a longing for change.

“What they share is a desire to see a Trump-like movement, or even a Cultural Revolution-style political shakeup, take place in China — a way to break from the status quo,” he said.

Zhang, the law professor in Beijing, said similarly, Trump’s reelection reflected widespread political discontent in the US.

“In this context, America’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ can be seen as a desperate response to the failure of democracy,” he said.

But Zhang believes there’s no need to be overly pessimistic.

After Mao’s final decade of turmoil and destruction, China moved away from the fervor of ideological and class struggles to focus on economic growth. It opened up to the world and embraced the global order that the US helped create, and the rest is history.

“After all, every country makes mistakes — what matters is whether it can correct them in time,” Zhang said.

“Right now in the United States, the breakdown and the repair of its social contract are locked in a race. If America can mend that contract before Trump and his MAGA movement inflict lasting damage…then there is still hope. The ‘beacon of democracy’ can shine again.”

Chiclayo’s main plaza was raucous with the sounds of hammering and music, people milling in anticipation as the scaffolding went up for vast digital screens in front of the city cathedral. Saturday’s open-air mass would be a very special one: a celebration marking the ascendency of Pope Leo XIV, the world’s first American pope – but better known here as Robert, the world’s first Chiclayano pope.

Through the cathedral’s open doors, a line of women formed in front of the confessional in preparation for the big evening. A children’s chorus performed on the steps, competing with the thumping bass of secular life down the street, where two men in short shorts were leading a dance class. Banners draped around the square showed Leo’s smiling face, 10 feet high. Signs outside a local restaurant touted its goat stew as his favorite lunch order, back when he lived here.

Inside the cathedral, Amalia Cruzado, 52, silently sobbed in the pews, her arms outstretched.

“It’s a day of miracles. Chiclayo is so blessed,” she said. After praying, she would head home and pick up the rest of her family to attend the evening mass; her elderly father, suffering from cancer, desperately needed a miracle for his health.

Pope Leo was born in the United States as Robert Prevost, but for his adopted nation of Peru – where he acquired citizenship in 2015 – he is a Chiclayano, a son of the bustling northern Peruvian city where he served as bishop for years, after working as a priest in the countryside.

Here, everyone has a story about him.

Back in the 1980s, Nicanor Palacios was an altar boy with Leo during his early priesthood in nearby Piura, and traveled the area with him for services. “Being the junior priest, he was often sent out in the field,” recalled Palacios, now an airforce technician. “He would take us out in the parish’s jeep to have lunch.”

“It wasn’t hard for him to fit in. There was a small village back then, called Kilometer 50, on the Pan-American Highway. He’d take us there for dry meat and fried plantains. He liked that type of stuff and liked to go to the country. He’d eat just like a northern Peru farmer: yucca, fried fish, maybe a bite of fried meat.”

“What I liked most was his advice, because many young people, even back then, they would get lost, but he was just a young man, 24 or 25 years old, very serious and full of advice,” said Palacios, whose mother died when he was young and for whom Leo and the other altar boys become a second family, he says.

Many years later, as a bishop in Chiclayo, Leo’s accent was still “very American,” according to local priest Emerson Lizana, 30, but his presence felt deeply familiar in this northern Peruvian outpost.

“The way he treated people, his presence enveloped you in a sense of trust. He had a Latin American heart,” Lizana said, describing how the then-bishop became part of the daily life of Chiclayo, visiting the city’s poorest neighborhoods and carrying a cross through deserted streets during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Searching for truth and searching for God

Chiclayo is a city famous for the fervor of its faithful, even in deeply Catholic Peru. According to a 2017 census, Peru’s population is 90% Christian and 76% Catholic – more than Italy and far more than in Leo’s native United States, where Catholics are under 20%.

Leo, widely considered a progressive pope and ideological successor to Pope Francis, worked closely with the neediest in Chiclayo, coordinating local NGOs, churches and religious groups in the late 2010s to assist a flood of Venezuelans fleeing political chaos and economic collapse in their home country.

But his tenure has not been without criticism – three women allegedly abused by a local priest released a letter in September last year accusing Leo of failing to fully investigate their claims while he was bishop. The new pope has also been called upon by Catholics for Choice to change his views on abortion; an X account under Prevost’s name previously shared articles critical of reproductive rights and “gender ideology.”

“We are very worried. As you may have noticed, there is a lot of emotion in the province and in the region about the appointment of the Pope who was from Chiclayo. Ultra-conservativism, fundamentalism, new movements can emerge from evangelical and Catholic roots,” she said.

“Above all it is the Church that has maintained this idea of being against abortions, that abortion is also a sin, that it is murder. And this continues to be referred to and repeated by the Peruvian authorities.”

Abortion access is heavily restricted in Peru; in 2023, the United Nations accused Peru’s government of violating the rights of a 13-year-old girl who was refused an abortion following years of rape by her father, and then imprisoned by local authorities after she miscarried.

Still, for a pope, Leo’s social progressivism in other areas is seen locally as an overall “good direction” by some rights advocates.

“We don’t expect that suddenly the Pope goes out and defends the rights of women, but perhaps he will take a position that is a bit more human, and less stigmatizing of women who interrupt their pregnancies,” said Rossina Vasquez, director of a women’s rights group in Peru.

An interest in seeking truth and justice is part of the worldview of Augustinian priests like Leo, according to Friar Pipé, teacher at an Augustinian-run school in the outskirts of Chiclayo.

“For us Augustinians, God is the truth, and for us searching for the truth is searching for God,” said Pipé. “What I hope is that Leo can be a pope who becomes a sign of unity for the church: we can always do better, through dialogue and understanding, both inside our Church and with other religions,” he added.

Pipé, 30, was personally ordained by Leo in 2023 and blessed him in return per tradition; a blessing that he now jokes may have played some role in Leo’s chances during the Vatican’s conclave to select a new pope last week.

He remembers watching a broadcast of the process on YouTube as it played out in Rome, his fellow Augustinians erupting in whoops of joy and triumph when Leo’s name was called out.

With a Chiclayano pope, now anything is possible, Pipé joked.

“Let’s see,” he laughed. “When Benedict was the Pope, Germany won the World Cup. Then Francis was the Pope, and Argentina won… now, Robert is Pope, either Peru or the USA are going to win the World Cup.”

But for believers like Amalia Cruzado, who have little but their faith, the sense that this is a particularly blessed time for Chiclayo is no laughing matter.

In her modest neighborhood, where Cruzado says children often go hungry or cannot afford shoes, dust rose on Saturday evening as a taxi bumped down the unpaved street, the decal on its rear window reading “La Bendición de Dios.”

It was finally time for the evening mass.

Her family of eight piled in – freshly dressed and coiffed, from her 9-month-old grandson to her 79-year-old father – for a hair-rising ride through traffic back to the darkening square. Street lights flickered on as they arrived, police still hard at work cordoning off the cathedral’s steps for the night’s rituals.

Cruzado hoisted her grandson in one arm and shepherded her father toward the front, past crowds taking selfies in front of the Pope’s illuminated likeness. Soon prayers would begin, followed by a familiar order: readings from the Bible, the homily by Chiclayo’s new bishop, communion.

“Papa! Amigo! El pueblo esta contigo!” congregants chanted in the crowd, blasting airhorns and lifting their children in the air as if it were a home team game. “Pope! Friend! The people are with you!

“Let me tell you, the Pope has two hearts: one is for where he was born, but the other one is for here, for us, the humble people of Chiclayo,” Cruzado said. “He is our Pope.”

Dozens of boxes of Nazi material confiscated by Argentinean authorities during World War II were recently rediscovered in the Supreme Court’s basement, the court said on Sunday.

The 83 boxes were sent by the Germany embassy in Tokyo to Argentina in June 1941 aboard the Japanese steamship “Nan-a-Maru,” according to the history that the court was able to piece together, it said in a statement.

At the time, the large shipment drew the attention of authorities, who feared its contents could affect Argentina’s neutrality in the war.

Despite claims at the time from German diplomatic representatives that the boxes held personal items, Argentine customs authorities searched five boxes at random.

They found postcards, photographs and propaganda material from the Nazi regime, as well as thousands of notebooks belonging to the Nazi party. A federal judge confiscated the materials, and referred the matter to the Supreme Court.

It was not immediately clear why the items were sent to Argentina or what, if any, action the Supreme Court took at the time.

Eighty-four years later, court staffers came across the boxes as they prepared for a Supreme Court museum.

“Upon opening one of the boxes, we identified material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler’s ideology in Argentina during the Second World War,” the court said.

The court has now transferred the boxes to a room equipped with extra security measures, and invited the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires to participate in their preservation and inventory.

Experts will also examine them for any clues about still-unknown aspects of the Holocaust, such as international financing networks used by the Nazis.

Argentina remained neutral in World War II until 1944, when it broke relations with Axis powers. The South American country declared war on Germany and Japan the following year.

From 1933 to 1954, according to the Holocaust Museum, 40,000 Jews entered Argentina as they fled Nazi persecution in Europe. Argentina is home to the largest population of Jews in Latin America.

For about 30 hours, the illusion of transatlantic unity over Ukraine was maintained.

Europe and Ukraine had demanded a deal on the 30-day unconditional ceasefire the Trump administration proposed two months earlier. European leaders said US President Donald Trump had personally backed their plan – and threat of sanctions if Russia declined to sign up by Monday – in a Saturday phone call, a picture of which they posted online from Kyiv.

Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, even joined a chorus of US allies demanding Russia adhere to the ceasefire demand.

But then Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke, refusing to even mention the demand, and instead presenting something old as something new: direct Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul, four days later. And transatlantic unity shattered. Trump leapt on the Kremlin proposal – simply stating on his Truth Social network that Putin didn’t want a ceasefire – and instead pressuring Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to “HAVE THE MEETING, NOW!!!”

Again, the pendulum swung back. Trump had been conspicuously silent as the US’ longstanding allies trumpeted their newfound unity. Putin spoke, and Trump realigned.

Zelensky was left only able to show personal commitment and valor, and to offer to make the meeting a face-to-face with Putin, the man charged with war crimes against his nation. That is a tough move for him domestically.

It is important to not exclude the possibility that, behind the scenes, Moscow and Washington are hatching something bringing the world closer to peace. But as Trump spoke, European leaders seemed to, in turn, fall silent themselves. Ukraine’s skies did not.

On the night in which a ceasefire had been demanded, Russia launched 108 drones, carrying out strikes including one that trapped a 10-year-old girl under the rubble in Kherson region.

The significance of Saturday’s Kyiv declaration lay less in the immediate likelihood of an end to the fighting for a month. Europe’s leaders appeared intensely skeptical that their overture would garner Moscow’s approval. Instead, cynics might argue, the exercise was about proving to the White House that Putin was not interested in the peace, or indeed the specific ceasefire proposal, that the Trump administration sought.

But that was not the only “reveal” that Europe’s four largest military powers got for their complex and lengthy trip to the Ukrainian capital. Trump also improved their perspective on his real position too.

Putin is now thrice emboldened. He was able to completely ignore the European and Ukrainian demand – to not even mention it directly. Secondly, he has faced – as yet – none of the “massive sanctions” on Russia and boosted military aid to Ukraine that Europe appeared to suggest Trump backed, in the event there was no ceasefire.

Thirdly, his proposal for direct talks in Istanbul – nothing new there, bar the date of Thursday – suddenly became the bedrock of Trump’s position. The US president held out the possibility of consequences if those talks were fruitless. But yet another step was introduced in between Russia betraying its disinterest in peace, and Ukraine’s allies escalating their measures against Moscow.

The singular persistent theme in all the past few months of chaos is Trump’s reluctance to move in ways that damage his relationship with the Kremlin. We do not know if Trump and Putin spoke in between the Europeans’ visit to Kyiv and Trump posting on Truth Social. But perhaps we do not need to: Either way, when faced with a fork in the road between the unity his European allies seek, and a path in which Putin and he remain on better terms, Trump chose the latter.

The threat of sanctions – massive or not – was always a complex task. Russia is already heavily sanctioned, and there are limited moves still to be made of real consequence, without damaging the West significantly too. Key is whether Europe tries to inflict pain on Russia without American support. To do so would expose their disunity, but may be a better choice than their threats in Kyiv ringing hollow.

The meeting in Istanbul, if indeed it happens, is itself a hugely perilous step. Putin and Zelensky palpably despise each other. The former sees the latter as a pro-European traitor and а success symbol born of the imperial decline that Soviet-era bureaucrats have yet to accept. The latter sees the former as the man who invaded his country mercilessly without reason, and relentlessly bombs children, every night. It is more likely the men fail to find common ground than emerge, reconciled, with a path ahead.

It is not impossible that the White House, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Turkey on the proposed date, and Trump in the region, tries to facilitate. Yet Putin has yet to even agree to attend, despite proposing the direct talks, making any acceptance now appear like some sort of grand gesture of peace. The United States being too deeply involved could backfire on their relationships with just about everyone.

The simplest conclusion to be drawn from the past few days is that Trump fails to see that Putin is seeking to buy time. The Kremlin’s forces appear to be reinforcing, not reducing, along a front line where they’re pushing hard near Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. The weekend’s deadlines have come and gone, exposing the brief moment of unity as an aberration, and the White House as unwilling to anger Putin.

The possible meeting in Istanbul is only three days away. But it will not bring peace immediately, or perhaps even a ceasefire at all, just diplomatic pageantry and significant personal animosity between two men from entirely different generations in the post-Soviet world. It may even set the peace process back, and again delay the moment when Trump must decide whether he will join his European allies in causing pain to Russia for refusing a truce.

What the answer to Trump’s postponed, vital decision, will be is already clear. How Europe and Ukraine fend for themselves is not.