'Project 2025' raises genuine concerns: China Daily editorial

The Heritage Foundation unveiled its so-called Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project as early as April last year. But it was not until Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had to respond to the Democrats' attack on him, citing what the conservative think tank claims is a 922-page blueprint for the next president of the United States, that the project rang any alarm bells for the public.

Reportedly more than 140 people working in the former Trump administration took part in the project, dozens of whom hold posts in the conservative organizations behind the project, including Trump's former senior advisers Mark Meadows and Stephen Miller. That prompted the Democrats to cite the report — which calls for an overhaul of the US governance system to centralize power in the hands of the president — as highlighting the prospective threat to US democracy if Trump wins the White House this year.

In her first public remarks as the leading Democratic presidential candidate, US Vice-President Kamala Harris vowed to defeat two enemies: Trump and "his extreme Project 2025 agenda". In response, the former US president said on social media that he knows nothing about the project. "I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of what they're saying is absolutely ridiculous and abysmal ... I have nothing to do with them."

That the director of the Project 2025, Paul Dans, who was previously chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management in the Trump administration, is departing from the role on Tuesday, which was welcomed by Trump's team, can be regarded as the Republican Party's latest attempt to cool down the situation to avoid the report from becoming a stumbling block to Trump's election campaign.

"Reports of Project 2025's demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you," said a statement of the Trump team.

Notably, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have bothered to provide solutions or even suggestions on the numerous questions the report raised. Instead, they have only used the report as a tool to smear each other.

Although the suggestions the report proposes are indeed absurd, including abolishing the US Department of Education to realize fair and true education of the US, many problems it touches upon are real obstacles to enhancing the US' domestic governance. The two parties' indifference to the problems identified in the report shows that all they care about is seizing power rather than using the power to address real challenges at home and abroad.

Despite the Republicans' emergency PR work to minimize the potential damage done by the report — in which China was defined as the US' enemy and mentioned nearly 500 times in what some describe as a "shockingly malicious" way — the report unequivocally reflects the growing far right sentiment in the US. Symptomatic of this, many in the US political circle hold a wrong perception of China, always viewing China from a hegemonic perspective. But China is not the US. It does not seek to replace the US as the hegemon. 

The Sino-US relationship remains at a critical juncture of de-escalation and stabilization. The US side needs to meet China halfway in their common efforts to continue to recalibrate the direction, manage risks, properly address differences, remove interference, and advance cooperation.

The report shows that the rise of the far right is by no means a phenomenon restricted to the political circle of Europe but is instead becoming a defining trend in Western politics. The rest of the world should be fully prepared for the West tilting increasingly to the right, which means more self-centered policies that care little about the spillover effects of national policies, less coordination and cooperation to address common challenges and hotspot issues, and more international governance reforms stalled in an all-your-fault blame game.