This is The Guardian.

Welcome to The Guardian long read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to the Guardian.com forward slash long read.

Americans are democracy's equivalent of second generation wealth, a Chinese journalist

on the US under Trump by Lauren Hilgars, read by Jiniya Chang. by Jania Cheng. On a Friday night in late May, Wang Jan was getting ready to broadcast.

It was pouring outside, and he was sitting in the garage apartment behind his house, just outside

Boston, eating dinner.

I am very sensitive to what Trump does, Wang was telling me in Mandarin, waving a fork.

When Trump holds a cabinet meeting, he sits there and the people next to him start to flatter

him.

And I think, isn't this the same as Mao Zedong?

Trump sells the same thing.

A little bit of populism, plus a little bit of small town shrewdness,

plus a little bit of, I have money.

Wang was sitting next to a rack of clothing,

the shirts and jackets the 58-year-old newsman wears professionally,

and sipping a seemingly bottomless cup of green tea that would eventually give way to coffee.

By 11 p.m., he would walk across the room and snap on a set of ringlights,

ready to carry on an unbroken string of chatter for a YouTube news program that he

calls Wang Jan's Daily Observations. It was a slow news night, but he would end up talking

until nearly 1am. This was his second broadcast of the day. Different time zones, he explained to me,

different audiences. Wang, who is more than 800,000 explained to me, different audiences.

...