The conviction of former U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment ahead of the 2016 election quickly became one of the hottest topics on Chinese social media.
Trump’s conviction became the most searched topic on Chinese social media platform Weibo and search engine Baidu on Friday morning in China. On short-video platform Douyin, TikTok's China-based sister application, it also landed among the five most searched topics.
While views varied, many Chinese netizens posted they hope the verdict by a New York jury, which found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts, will cause unrest in the U.S. between the former president’s supporters and opponents.
Although as president, Trump took a series of punitive measures against China in areas such as technology and trade, some Chinese netizens felt that his conviction was unfair and repeated unfounded claims by his supporters that the verdict was political persecution from U.S. President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
"The Democrats' tactics are really low," one Weibo user under the name Little Rabbit and Evil Cake commented on the news.
Other netizens stood by the guilty verdict, declaring Trump's conviction his own doing.
"If you do too much evil, you will be killed by yourself," one user under the name Gray Wolf with White Fur wrote on Weibo.
But many Chinese netizens were less interested in the verdict than the unrest they hoped it would cause in the U.S.
"Trump supporters quickly mobilize and occupy Congress," said one Weibo user in a call for a repeat of the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters trying to stop the 2020 election from being certified.
Those who stormed the Capitol were repeating Trump's claim, without evidence, that Biden cheated in the election.
A Chinese nationalist commentator named Lu Kewen insulted Trump’s supporters in a post that hoped they resort to violence.
"Put Trump in jail and wait for the fuming rednecks to draw their guns," he wrote.
His was not the only call for violence in the U.S. that as of Friday morning had not been removed from Chinese social media, despite the ability of Beijing’s Great Firewall internet censors to quickly delete posts by China’s own critics and domestic calls for unrest.
"Fast forward to the new Civil War. I want to see rivers of blood!" another user under the name Wearing Red Clothes wrote.
But there were also more analytical comments from Chinese netizens.
Chinese economist Hong Hao posted on his Weibo that Trump's trial is not conducive to the stability of American society.
"The biggest issue in the United States right now is not allowing a criminal to run for president. Rather, politicizing the judicial process in these Trump cases has shaken the foundation of the rule of law in the United States," he said.
During the 2016 election, Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her silence about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006. Such payments are not illegal and are called hush money.
Trump was found guilty of falsifying company business records to conceal the reimbursement paid to Cohen. Trump denies the encounter with Daniels or that anything illegal occurred.
Trump on Thursday railed against the jury’s verdict and said, without presenting any evidence, that the trial was rigged.
"We have a judge who's highly conflicted. He happens to be corrupt. It's the worst confliction that anybody's seen. Nobody has ever seen anything like it," he said.
A spokesperson for the White House Counsel's Office responded, saying only, "We respect the rule of law."
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Despite the conviction, Trump is expected to be the Republican presidential nominee for the election on November 5.
Trump on Friday said he would appeal the conviction and repeated unfounded claims that the trial was rigged.
Biden on Friday said the verdict showed "the American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed" and said it is "reckless, is dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this (trial) was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict."
When asked at a regular Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing Friday if Trump’s conviction would prevent him from visiting China, if reelected in November, or present any other difficulties for China-American relations, spokesperson Mao Ning declined to comment, calling it a U.S. domestic affair.
