There are no reliable polls in China to assess the preference for the outcome of U.S. presidential election. The Chinese are conflicted but, in the end, probably prefer a Hillary Clinton victory.
The PRC is pulled between twin desires of nationalistic release and geopolitical stability. The former is emotionally charged, while the latter is rooted in a deeply-rooted pragmatic instinct.
First, nationalism. In China, individual ambition -- the desire to make a mark that is acknowledged by society -- is trenchant. The country's Confucian hierarchy is fundamentally meritocratic. Billionaires form peasant backgrounds are folk heroes. Chinese have a dragons in their hearts. Te urge to surge is a primal instinct, even amongst non-middle class individuals.
However, society remains highly regimented. Social and professional ladders are blocked by factors ranging from underdeveloped institutions to a power structure built upon opaque relationships of mutual obligation ("guanxi").
As a result, aggressive impulses are repressed. Individual identities are smothered, burdened by layers of suppressed expression. Brand China--nationalism--is seized en masse as the ultimate identity surrogate.
The Chinese, vulnerable to charismatic demagoguery, see Donald Trump for what he is -- a narcissistic, non-strategic decision maker. A vocal minority, particularly online, admire his strongman authoritarianism, just as they do Vladimir Putin's. But the majority is confounded by the combination of America's industrially prowess and its narrow worldview, few mainlanders understand how Trump could win the nomination of a Republican party traditionally associated with free markets and pro-business policies.
In fact, the Chinese are enjoying a frisson of schadenfreude. Most believe Tump would be a disaster for the United States, economically and geo-politically, and a short-term boon for the PRC. China's rise during the during the Bush administration coincided with our distractions in the Middle East. Despite Trump's anti-China rhetoric, his impulsiveness would force America to take its eye off the ball. The country's rise -- that is, the realization of Xi Jinping's "China Dream" -- would continue with fewer externally-imposed constraints. China's strategies for international infrastructural and financial dominance through the "One Belt, One Road" framework and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) initiative would encounter less resistance by a distressed American administration.
That said, the Chinese are relentless pragmatists. Yes, the Communist Party has made untenable territorial claims in the South China Sea. True, the country's military build up has been, and will continue to be, aggressive. In China, stability, domestic and international, is sublime. Ascent will not continue without robust international institutions, many of which are anathema to Donald Trump. No matter how successful the central government is in rebalancing the economy toward domestic consumption, exports to Western markets, which have fueled more than 60 percent of economic expansion since 1990, will determine growth rates for decades to come. China grasps the dangers of chaos on an almost primordial level. It has learned from the thirty years of economic and social disaster triggered by post-Liberation isolation that walls, at least outside cyberspace, are counterproductive. In China, there is no desire, even among reactionary military factions, to become divorced from global forces of progress.
Donald Trump represents a threat to the global international order and, hence, a threat to the well-being of Chinese families and their children. Hillary Clinton will not be loved. She's too emotional inaccessible and tends to hector in a patronizing way proud Chinese find offensive. She also doesn't the charisma of Obama, a savvy cool cat who conquered the conventional order to actually become the order. (Mold-breaking is tolerated in China but only as a means to an end, a tool of advancement within an omnipresent hierarchy.) And she is a more brazen proponent of American exceptionalism. But she is, above all else, a rationalist and a proponent of the existing international order. In her words, she is "afflicted with a responsibility gene."
Hillary Clinton is China's safe, albeit not emotional satisfying, choice. A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for stability. And, in the Middle Kingdom, stability is sublime.