US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation.
Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世).
The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines.
Photo: AFP
Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week, they have become hot property again.
“In the days after he won the election there was a lot of interest,” said Hong, who originally designed the statues as a joke. “Politicians are normally so boring, while [Trump] is this massive online figure who often says fantastical things.”
Hong, 47, estimates that he has shifted hundreds of the ceramic creations in the past few years.
They raise a smile among customers because Trump’s “personality and the shape of the statue are two opposite extremes,” he said.
Each figure comes in packaging emblazoned with a Chinese phrase that translates to: “Make your company great again,” a play on Trump’s well-worn slogan for restoring American supremacy.
Copycat versions have even appeared on shopping platforms in the US — including Amazon and Chinese-owned Temu — for up to US$45.
“It’s a good laugh to poke some fun at authority figures and famous people,” said Hong, sitting barefoot on the floor of his minimalist studio.
Hong’s loose white clothing, shaved head and softly spoken nature bear little resemblance to the eccentric subjects of his sculpting. He recently began designing a similarly tongue-in-cheek effigy of another US luminary — Trump backer Elon Musk, who seems set to play a major role in his administration.
The statue casts the controversial billionaire in the style of the Marvel superhero Iron Man, clad in a rippling suit of metal armor.
In Hong’s version, though, a large rocket protrudes from Musk’s groin to symbolize the SpaceX chief executive’s galactic ambitions.
Despite toeing the line between homage and offense, Hong said he has a lot of admiration for Musk, whose electric vehicle company Tesla operates a massive factory in Shanghai and enjoys robust sales in China.
“Musk’s rockets are awesome — he’s brought the price of rockets down a lot,” he said. “He has done, as an individual entrepreneur, what an entire country can’t even do.”
Hong declined to comment on Trump’s policies toward China, a sensitive topic in the Asian nation, but many expect relations with the US to deteriorate further after Trump’s inauguration.
On the election campaign trail, Trump took a tough line on Beijing, vowing even higher tariffs on Chinese imports.
He previously imposed onerous levies during a bruising trade dispute in his first term — measures largely preserved by his successor US President Joe Biden.
Trump also angered Chinese leaders with his brash rhetoric, notably blaming Beijing for the decline of US manufacturing and calling the pathogen that causes COVID-19 the “Chinese virus.”
Yet the 78-year-old still appears to have many admirers in China.
“I still think he’s just as funny [as before],” Hong said. “Every day there’s interesting news when he’s president.”
Despite the renewed interest, Hong no longer sells his Trump statues on Chinese sites after they removed his listings — perhaps, he said, because they were deemed insulting to Buddhists.
Still, orders keep rolling in from tourists who visit Hong’s workshop, as well as from friends and acquaintances.
“Now he’s been elected again, the sculpture has exploded in popularity once more,” Hong said.
Perhaps, he added, it was because “Trump is someone with a lot of backstory.”
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS