Trump Drops Gordon Chang — The Collapse of the “China Collapse” Narrative's Credit in Washington

On July 6, 2026, Trump did something at the White House that observers found both surprising and not so surprising: he publicly called out “China expert” Gordon Chang, complaining that he “is always bearish” and “says nasty things,” that he keeps scaremongering that “the China threat is like the sky is about to fall,” and that this is pure fearmongering with no basis in fact.

A sitting president publicly taking down a “China expert” his own camp has long relied on — that scene alone contains plenty worth unpacking.

Twenty-Five Years of Persistent Error

Gordon Chang is an American lawyer of Chinese descent, not a scholar. His claim to fame was The Coming Collapse of China, published in 2001; thereafter he fell into path dependence: for twenty-five years, every few years, he pushed the collapse prediction back another stretch. From “within a few years” to “within ten years,” to in 2011 “only one year left” — the persistent error never shook his presence in conservative media.

This is no isolated case. Similar roles are filled by people such as Miles Yu and Minxin Pei, who in foreign media keep producing the same kind of product: Chinese faces supplying “America must win, the rival must lose” with the documentation Americans want. Their audience is not the Chinese; it is the segment of American conservatives unwilling to accept China's rise.

Why This Is More Than a Personal Vendetta

Trump's reasoning was direct: he has been number one on TikTok, and TikTok helped him win the election. Chang keeps shouting that TikTok should be banned — in Trump's eyes, that is destroying his campaign brand.

But two of Trump's clearer judgments on this question are more worth flagging:

First, he acknowledges China's strength. “China is indeed a strong competitor, and America needs to be careful” — this is entirely incompatible with Chang's “China is about to collapse at any moment” narrative. Trump's pragmatic business logic lets him hold two things at once: China is a strong rival, but it is not the sky falling.

Second, he questions the tactical value of the “sky-is-falling” line. The “China threat” narrative has long played the role of a deflection from governance responsibility in Washington. Hawkish politicians refuse to acknowledge America's social contradictions and institutional defects, so whenever a problem arises, they blame China first. More importantly, if China really were “no match,” the military-industrial complex and the intelligence agencies would not get the hundreds of millions of dollars in budget they need. Washington therefore has to maintain two contradictory beliefs at the same time: the China model is unsustainable (politically correct) and China is poisoning America (where the money is).

Schrödinger's China

The narrative produced by “experts” like Gordon Chang carries an obvious logical contradiction: China is so weak it is about to collapse, yet so strong it can threaten America's global hegemony. The contradiction exists not because the analysis fails on its own terms — but because it serves two different purposes. One satisfies the emotional need for “the rival must lose”; the other satisfies the budgetary need for “the threat is imminent.”

Read together in one volume, the logic falls apart; split them up and sell them to different clients, and the logic works.