<![CDATA[Donald Trump, human rights activist? Meet the Chinese dissidents rooting for the US president]>

Inquisitive eyes darted towards where Xia sat, as he enthusiastically navigated a litany of conservative Republican talking points: welfare reform, immigration control, the migrant caravan, the perils of a Bernie Sanders presidency.

Curiosity would likely have turned to surprise had the customers known who Xia was: a Chinese dissident who signed the seminal Charter 08 pro-democracy manifesto and who was stripped of his Peking University professorship in 2013 amid reports he had delivered "anti-Party and anti-socialist" speeches to students.

Now living in Washington after fleeing China in 2014 and in the middle of writing a book about what he calls the Chinese people's 100-year-old unfulfilled dream of constitutional democracy, Xia is but one of an unabashed pro-Trump contingent within the US Chinese dissident community.

That Trump supporters exist within the US-based diaspora of Chinese activists is not in itself surprising. "It's a broad community with commensurately broad views," said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

But the pro-Trumpers include some of Beijing's most prominent and outspoken liberal critics, activists with first-hand experience of a government's zero-tolerance approach to dissent " and who know well the dangers of any government that is intolerant of criticism, throttles the press and revolves around the wishes of one man.

Even so, inspired by what they view as an unprecedented escalation in US governmental action against Beijing on numerous fronts " from the trade war to the targeting of telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies " campaigners like Xia have pinned their hopes of Chinese political reform on President Trump, a leader who calls Chinese President Xi Jinping a friend and a "special person", and who has fawned over the country's harsh imposition of the death penalty.

Like a number of other human rights activists who spoke to the South China Morning Post, the 58-year-old's support for Trump is also fuelled by his hatred of socialism and communism, ideologies that Trump has spoken out against forcefully on numerous occasions.

A recent speech in support of toppling Venezuela's socialist leader Nicolas Maduro was only the latest proof of Trump's crusade against communism, pro-Trump Chinese protester Ge Lifang said. Ge, who came to the US in 2004, has spent much of her free time demonstrating against the actions by local governments in China to evict residents from their homes to make way for development projects.

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"His criticism of communist parties was so piercing", Ge, 64, said of Trump's February 18 speech, when he declared true communism had "delivered anguish and devastation and failure" in countries around the world.

Trump's public condemnations of communism have never singled out China, but that doesn't bother Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal activist and human rights advocate who rose to international prominence after a dramatic escape from house arrest in 2012 and subsequent flight to the US.

"There are only a handful of communist countries left," Chen, 47, said with a chuckle. "Unless you've been asleep you'll know who [he's] talking about."

Chen, now a visiting fellow at Washington's Catholic University, shuns the label "Trump fan" because of its connotations of unconditional support. But he emphatically praises the administration's recent China-related actions, which include sanctions against Chinese military officials, punitive tariffs on US$250 billion of Chinese imports and indictments of Chinese individuals accused of stealing trade secrets.

That view appears to be finding some traction even within academic circles in China, according to Elizabeth Economy, director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

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A number of visiting Chinese intellectuals have described the Trump administration's tough line as "very helpful", Economy said at a recent CFR event: "This is the one thing that they believe is keeping Xi Jinping from his worst excesses."

But Trump's supporters within the dissident community admit that rooting for him has required some mental gymnastics.

The administration deserves credit for taking a tough stand against China's attempts to undermine human rights mechanisms in some United Nations forums, Richardson said, but "those efforts are undercut when President Trump waxes envious about China's grotesque use of the death penalty in drug-related offences, which often entail little if any due process".

According to HRW's 2018 report on the US, Trump's first year in office saw the country move "backward on human rights at home and abroad", while the president had "repeatedly coddled autocratic leaders and showed little interest or leadership in pressing for the respect of human rights abroad".

"Trump has 1,000 faults " 10,000 faults " that I won't go into," echoed Tang Baiqiao, now of California, who has gone from student activist in 1989 to one of the US-based dissident community's most ardent Trump supporters.

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While he counts Trump's failure so far to explicitly raise the issue of human rights with China as one of those faults, Tang, 51, still believes that actions speak louder than words. Having lived under five presidents after fleeing to the US in 1992, he said that previous administrations paid nothing but lip service to the matter.

"Should he use the methods of [former secretary of state] Hillary Clinton " saying disingenuous things all the time like 'We condemn China for arresting these dissidents' then going silent and returning to business as usual with the Chinese?" he asked.

"Trump is using irregular methods, [but] his ultimate aim is to improve the state of human rights in China," said Tang, who said justifying his support as a human rights activist for Trump was "the hardest question for me to answer".

Tang interprets Trump's apparently amicable relationship with Xi as a ploy, citing the Chinese expression "killing someone with a soft knife".

"Somebody stabs you with it and you'll see no blood," he explained. "They'll even stroke your face and say 'Ah, my good friend.'"

Tang believes that 2019 will see Washington continue to press Beijing economically and otherwise, stirring dissatisfaction within China about its leadership and ultimately creating unstoppable social unrest.

Believing that Trump will play a pivotal role in that collapse, Tang has created a Chinese version of the president's preferred public relations platform " his personal Twitter account " for the benefit of Chinese speakers around the world who either do not speak English or might struggle to decipher Trump's unique vernacular.

Run by a small group of bilingual volunteers, the account, according to its bio note, aims to help its followers "understand the theories of governance in Trump's tweets".

Though generally meticulous in its translations, the account occasionally betrays Tang's political leanings. In tweets in which Trump adopts a combative tone towards Beijing, "China" is more often translated as zhonggong (Communist Party of China) than zhongguo (China).

Amassing close to 50,000 followers since its September launch, the account seems to be gaining traction. But faithfully translating Trump's each and every word " including the disparaging nicknames with which he brands his detractors " may backfire when it comes to readers who find Trump's character an obstacle to their support.

"I don't oppose absolutely every single one of his domestic policies, but I find many of his comments to be distasteful," said Teng Biao, an exiled human rights lawyer who, like Xia, was a signatory of the Charter 08 manifesto.

The 45-year-old, who finds Trump's "anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT [tendencies]" particularly disturbing, said he was "happy" to see Beijing's leadership encountering new worldwide resistance " led by the US " on trade issues. Such pressure, he said, could contribute to the eventual downfall of the Chinese government.

"But being happy to see it does not equate to support for Trump because, behind the scenes, Trump has no interest in promoting democracy in China," said Teng.

"Many of his comments and actions show that he is willing, at any time, to put a price on democracy."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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