“Be cool,” he told Americans.
Then he blinked Wednesday afternoon in the face of financial turmoil — particularly, a rapid rise in government bond yields that could shake the dominant position of the dollar and the foundation of the U.S. economy. By pausing some tariffs for dozens of countries for 90 days, he also gave away something to his main rival, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, with whom he’s engaged in a game of chicken that risks decoupling the world’s two biggest economies and turning the global economic order upside down.
Xi learned that his adversary has a pain point.
As reckless and ruthless as Trump may seem to some parts of the world, in Xi and China, he is squaring off with a leader and a party state that has a long history of single-minded pursuit of policies, even when they resulted in economic and human catastrophe. Among Chinese, a consensus from Beijing’s critics and its supporters is that the endgame may come down to which leader will be able to make his people endure misery in the name of the national interest. “Tariffs and even economic sanctions are not Xi Jinping’s pressure points,” Hao Qun, an exiled Chinese novelist who writes under the name Murong Xuecun, wrote on the social platform X. “He is not particularly concerned about the hardships tariffs may cause for ordinary people.”
Unlike Trump, Xi does not speak to the Chinese public through social media platforms, although he controls all of them. Everything he says and does is choreographed. It is impossible to get into his head because the public knows little about him beyond his official facade. But insights into how he might react in his standoff with Trump can be found by looking at how he views hardship, his relations with the Chinese public and his record as the leader of a nation of 1.4 billion people.
The Chinese internet is full of nationalistic chatters about the need to “resolutely fight back and stand our ground to the very end.”
People shared a video clip of Chairman Mao Zedong talking about the Korean War: “We will fight for as long as they want to fight, and we will fight until we win completely.”
Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, shared comments made by the former chairman in 1964, calling the United States “a paper tiger.”
“Don’t believe its bluff,” Mao Zedong told a French parliament delegation visiting China. “One poke, and it’ll burst!”
Some commentators online evoked the Great Leap Forward to show the Communist Party’s ability to enforce austerity at times of difficulty. The party waged the campaign between 1958 and 1962 to rapidly industrialize China. Its policies defied science and the laws of nature, resulting in a famine and tens of millions of deaths.
While starving people in the countryside were resorting to cannibalism, Mao instructed the farmers to eat grain bran and edible wild plants. “Endure hardship for one year, two years, even three years, and we’ll turn things around,” he said.
Xi, whom some Chinese view as Mao’s successor to the mantle, likes talking about the benefits of withstanding hardship.
Born in a revolutionary family, Xi experienced political turmoil and adversity at a young age. His father, a vice premier, was purged when Xi was 9 years old. During the Cultural Revolution, Xi’s father was severely persecuted. The son, not yet 16 years old, had to move to a village deep in the Loess Plateau and work as a farmer.
“The seven tough years I spent living and working in the countryside were a great test for me,” he was quoted as saying in a long feature by the official Xinhua News Agency. “Whenever I encountered difficulties later on, I would think of how, even under such harsh conditions back then, I was still able to get things done.”
It was 2023, and China’s economy was struggling to recover from the COVID pandemic. Youth unemployment skyrocketed. Xi told young people they should learn to “eat bitterness,” using a colloquial expression that means to endure hardships.
In a state media article about Xi’s expectations for the young generation, the word “hardship” was mentioned 37 times.
Early in 2022, it was evident that the omicron variant was too contagious to contain but that nearly all other countries that had embraced vaccines were able to reopen their economies. But Xi insisted that China live through his draconian “zero COVID” measures while resisting importing Western vaccines. Hundreds of millions of people endured lockdowns, daily tests and forced quarantines. Many lives and livelihoods were ruined.
In the past few years, Xi has resisted the calls of many economists and even his own officials to provide cash support to the public to boost consumption. In a 2021 speech, he urged against “welfarism,” saying, “Once welfare benefits go up, they don’t come back down.”
The truth is 600 million Chinese take home less than $140 a month and have minimum social benefits, a major reason they save so much and consume less than the economy needs.
Xi did end zero COVID eventually, but did so abruptly without proper vaccination. Many were quickly infected, seniors died, and long lines formed outside crematories.
China’s chronic real estate meltdown seems to have finally pushed Xi closer to accepting the idea of helping consumers, although some economists believe it might be too late, especially in the face of the trade war.
Xi does have a pain point on the economy: He can’t let things get so bad that it jeopardizes the legitimacy of the party’s rule. Nationwide protests in November 2022 helped bring zero COVID to an end. The tariffs threaten China’s exports, which are driving the country’s economy. On Friday, Xi made his first public comments about the tariff war.
“China’s development has always relied on self-reliance and hard work — never on the charity of others, and never fearing any unjust suppression,” he was quoted saying by the state media.
As the world learned this week, Trump cannot completely ignore the financial markets or the Wall Street and tech billionaires who supported his campaign. They reached out to his Cabinet members to convey their concerns. Even loyalists like Elon Musk and William A. Ackman, the hedge fund manager, expressed their disagreement with the president’s tariff policies.
It’s hard to imagine that any Chinese entrepreneur would dare to do the same or, like Musk, have the channel to convey their concerns to Xi, who has pushed aside his political opponents and cracked down on private companies. If Trump aspires for absolute power like Xi, he has a long way to go.
I have been checking Chinese social media the past few days hunting for any well-known company or entrepreneur complaining about the trade war. I found none. Ordinary people who lamented online that they faced pay cuts or lost business because of the tariffs were shot down by nationalistic commenters and labeled “unpatriotic.”
That’s a base Trump can’t compete with.
“Submitting to hegemony has never been an option for China,” wrote a Weibo user Thursday. “If we could kick out the Americans during the Korean War, we have nothing to fear” with its tariff stick, the post continued. “We must respond with an iron fist.” The comment was liked more than 3,000 times.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
