Hong Kong television commentator Wu Jun observed recently that despite Donald Trump’s anti-Beijing rhetoric, he “could in fact be the best president for China.” The Chinese analyst is right: A Trump presidency could open the way for China’s strategic dominance in Asia and elsewhere.

Wu’s comment was focused on Trump’s mercantilist style, evoking a world in which Trump and President Xi Jinping, two “big guys,” might sit around a table at Mar-a-Lago and cut deals without worrying about human rights. “The Republican Party is more practical and Trump is a businessman who puts his commercial interests above everything else,” Wu said .

But there’s a deeper, more dangerous way in which Trump might be an enabler for Chinese ascendancy. His policies would play into China’s narrative about the world — and undermine the foundations of U.S. power in Asia, even as they are bolstering a rising China.

Let’s start with the impact of a Trump presidency on the Muslim world. A South Asian chief executive of a global company put it bluntly: “There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and they won’t forget what Trump said” about banning Muslim immigrants to the United States. He predicted that Muslims would turn away from a Trump-led United States ­— not just Iraqis and Syrians, but Malaysians and Indonesians, too. The beneficiary of this global rebalancing would be China, he warned.