Loyalty to party over loyalty to country.
Ruthless ideology over the rule of law.
Government of, by, and for the powerful over government of, by, and for the people.
This is the Chinese Communist Party’s playbook for political oppression.
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump claims to be tough on China, frequently making false accusations about the policies of the Biden-Harris administration. The only problem? You can’t claim to be “tough on China” if you want to turn America into China.
Project 2025—former President Trump’s plan which he has repeatedly and falsely claimed he has nothing to do with—is a blueprint to copy the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian tactics and use them to undermine the essential freedoms, rights, and protections we enjoy in this country.
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In fact, in many ways, Project 2025 mirrors some of the very same moves that Chinese President Xi Jinping has made to solidify his rule during his decades-long rise to power:
Tactic 1: Centralize power in a single person. President Xi has so systematically consolidated his control over the Chinese government that Chinese media calls it “decision by one authority.” Project 2025 plans to similarly consolidate Trump’s control over the U.S. government, calling for the “boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will.”
Tactic 2: Install party loyalists throughout the government. After President Xi seized power, he used “anti-corruption” as a pretext to purge his political rivals from the CCP and silence dissent. Under the pretext of “draining the swamp,” Project 2025 plans to purge the “Administrative State” of civil servants insufficiently loyal to Trump. Project 2025 already maintains a personnel database with a questionnaire to screen recruits’ loyalty to the disgraced former president.
Tactic 3: Curb judicial independence. President Xi has tightened political control over China’s courts since taking office, especially in Hong Kong, where judges and prosecutors once acted independently in accordance with rule of law but now follow Xi’s orders. Project 2025 includes plans to exercise control over the Department of Justice through “a vast expansion of the number of appointees in every office” who will follow Trump’s orders. It also plans to “rein in” the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in response to investigations into Trump’s numerous crimes and attacks against our democracy.
Tactic 4: Restrict individual freedoms and enforce strict social conformity. President Xi has imposed “ethnic fusion” policies that destroy the language and identities of minorities in China, particularly Tibetans and Uyghurs, while also enforcing traditional gender roles, denying protections for LGBTQ persons, and refusing to recognize same-sex marriage. Sound familiar? Project 2025’s goals foresee “employment decisions based on religion” including “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion … out of every federal rule, agency regulation” and replacing them with “biblically based policies.”
Tactic 5: Restrict bodily autonomy. For 35 years, the Chinese government took away the freedom of women to make decisions about their own bodies by imposing a “one-child policy” through the coercive power of the state. Now, President Xi is using the power of the state to coerce women to have more children. Likewise, Donald Trump brags about ending Roe v. Wade and taking away the freedom of American women to choose. Project 2025 would expand the coercive power of the American government to further restrict women’s freedom to make decisions about their own bodies by rejecting the idea of abortion as health care and directing the Food and Drug Administration to “[r]everse its approval” of proven, safe abortion medications, including mifepristone. It also plans to curtail personal freedoms by rolling back abortion privacy protections and increasing the government’s surveillance of abortions.
None of these plans should come as a surprise. Trump has long admired the Chinese President, saying “he’s a brilliant man. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.”
Many of us have denounced Xi’s use of that iron fist since he took control of China in 2012 because his brutal reign runs counter to America’s human rights values. Yet Project 2025’s 887-page “how to” guide would help Trump seize the same authoritarian powers here in the United States.
The parallels are undeniable.
As a top Democrat on two of the major human rights watchdog commissions in Congress—my outspoken and effective advocacy recently earned me the distinction of being sanctioned by the Chinese government—I have learned that actions speak louder than words.
Project 2025 may pay lip service to support “constitutionally limited government,” but in reality, it is a plan to copy and paste the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian playbook and use it to govern America—rejecting the principles of freedom and democracy enshrined in our founding documents and giving up on the ideals that are essential to this country’s promise of liberty and justice for all.
China came under total authoritarian control 75 years ago. A second term for Donald Trump in 2025 threatens the same for the United States of America. As the authors of Project 2025 themselves warn, “When authoritarian governments explain what they plan to do, believe them.”
Jim McGovern is a United States Congressman representing Massachusetts’s 2nd congressional district.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.