When it comes to China, Donald Trump has nothing good to say publicly.

Yet Trump has been a secret admirer of Chinese businesses for some time. At a 2008 international hospitality conference in New York City attended by tourist industry executives, the business magnate attributed the United States’s falling competitiveness to government regulations and painted China as a veritable corporate paradise:

In China, they fill up hundreds of acres of land, constantly dumping and dumping dirt in the ocean. I asked the builder, did you get an environmental impact study? He goes, “What?’ I asked, “Did you need approval?” No, the Chinese said. And yet if I am the last guy to drop one pebble in the ocean here in this city, I will be given the electric chair.