Xi Jinping has leg preparation for this moment for years.
In April 2020, long before President Trump launched a commercial war that would shake the global economy, China’s main leader held a meeting with senior officials of the Communist Party and cut his vision of tables in the United States in a confrontation.
The tensions between his government and the first Trump administration had been slowly on a previous round of tariffs and technological restrictions. Things got worse after the appearance of Covid, which based global trade and explained how much the United States and the rest of the world needed China for everything, from surgical masks to pain medications.
Given Washington’s concerns about the commercial imbalance, China could have opened its economy to more foreign companies, as they had committed to doing decades ago. I could have bought more American airplanes, crude oil and soybeans, since its officials had promised the commercial conversations of Mr. Trump. It could have stopped subsidizing state factories and companies that made steel and solar panels so cheap that many US manufacturers did not do the business.
Instead, Mr. XI chose an aggressive course.
Chinese leaders must “harden the dependence of international production chains in our country, forming a powerful ability to counteract and dissuade foreign parties of artificial interruption supplies” to China, XI said in their speech before the Central Commission of Financial and Economic Affairs in 2020.
In a nutshell: China should master the supplies of things that the world needs, so that its adversaries think twice before wearing rates or trying to cut China.
Mr. Xi Has Ramped Up Exports and deepened China’s Position As The World’s Leading Base For Manufacturing, In Part By Directing The State-Controlled Commercial Banking System to Lend An Extra $ 2 Trillion to Industrial Borrowers About The Past Four Years, According to Data From from from from from frrom from From from from from from from from from from from from from from from China from from from China from from from China from China from from China from from from China from from China from from from China from China from China from China from China from China. It has also introduced new weapons of economic war in the country’s arsenal: export controls, antimonopoly laws and black lists to return the decline to US companies.
Then, when Trump’s current administration slapped huge tariffs on Chinese products, China was able to go to the offensive. In addition to retaliation with their own taxes, export restrictions imposed on a wide range of minerals and critical magnets, whose global supply had cornered. Such minerals are essential to assemble everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles.
In the United States, the imminent threat of empty store shelves and higher consumption prices is to press the Trump administration. The prices of some critical minerals have tripled since China presented its curbs, according to Argus Media, a London’s basic product research firm.
“It is about turning the leverage so that the world depends on China, and China depends on anyone. It is a reversal of what XI has been so irritated, that China depended so much on the West,” said Kirsten Asdal, a former intelligence advisor of the United States Department of Defense that now headed a Firm of Consultation of China, ASDAL.
China is still based on the West for many advanced technologies such as high -end semiconductors and aircraft engines. But his willingness to arm the supply chain can be one of the most marked examples of how Mr. XI is redefining China’s relationship with the world and challenging the supremacy of the United States as no Chinese leader before him.
Make the world choose sides
Just although they are beginning conversations that US officials are destined to display tensions, the two nations seem to be established in a competition without restrictions, partly of crucial technologies that will shape the future, as the artificial.
Its rivalry can begin to split to the world so that competitive influence spheres. With the United States pushing other countries to restrict trade with China, and Beijing warns that it will punish the nations to do so, the pressure of choosing the sides is increasing.
“China will use each and every one of the tools at your disposal to cause pain and impose costs to the United States and any country that aligns with the United States,” said Evan Measureos, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Georgetown who was an advisor to Asia of President Barack Obama.
“The whole world,” Mr. Fellowiros continued, “he is about to learn the answer to a very important question: how reliable are we in commerce with China and how much is it worth for us?”
The Trump administration has already shown that it cannot completely cut commercial ties with Beijing. He exempt Chinese smartphones, semiconductors and other electronic from some of their rates. Trump also returned to tariffs on car manufacturers. China has also silently indicated that it could exclude some semiconductors, medications to save lives and other medical care products from their 125 percent tariffs on US goods.
Even so, the alluvion of rates attacks the heart of the China Growth Motor. Exports have one of the only brilliant points in a weakened economy by a real estate crisis and the fall in consumer confidence. If the commercial war crawls, it could result in millions of lost jobs in China, analysts estimate.
“Never kneel!”
Mr. XI has said for years that the United States is determined to frustrate China’s rise, and the commercial war seems to have validated its warnings.
It seems more inclined than ever to flex China’s muscles, analysts say, seeing the commercial fight as proof of their authority as the most powerful Chinese leader from Mao Zedong. And its strategy reflects its perception that China is no longer weaker than the United States.
When he came to power in 2012, Mr. XI promised to pursue “the great renewal of the Chinese nation.” That ambition is in the center of the myth created around Mr. XI: that is a transforming figure that restores the glory of China, returning a century of humiliation by foreign powers.
To achieve its objectives, Mr. XI changed the rules to remain indefinitely. He has turned national security into a priority of the whole society. Pour money into strategic industries, such as semiconductors, who think it will help China better compete with the United States.
China has expanded its domain in lithium -ion batteries used to feed electric vehicles, avant -garde robots for manufacturing, solar panels and wind turbines. Experts say that China is also up to date with the United States in artificial intelligence, considered the battle of the next industrial revolution.
Mr. XI also squeezed China’s fixed propaganda team, which has been increased in recent weeks to gather the public for a prolonged “struggle”. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a video about the commercial conflict on social networks entitled “Never kneel!”
“The commercial war is the final validation that the western hostile forces are trying to contain, suppress and surround China,” said Asdal. “XI is saying:” We have to be enough and strong to defend ourselves. “
Even if Mr. XI ends up having to go back first, he could turn a tactical retreat like a victory over Trump.
“This concentration of the authority allows the Chinese leader to make unanswered political decisions, and reverse the course with the same speed,” Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a member of the Foreign Affairs Council, Affairsin, wrote.
Costs for China
It is not clear that Mr. Xis’s strategy makes China strong enough to overcome the United States as the main superpower. The focus on critical technologies and economic self -sufficiency has worsened friction with China’s commercial partners, and has a cost to many Chinese homes.
American leaders used to say that if China expand their economic ties with the West, it would gradually advance towards political liberalization and a complete hug of free markets. But China advanced in its own terms, combining its unique authoritarian system with capitalism and enriching richer without losing political control.
Mr. XI doubled that model, leading more capital to state -owned companies and banks to ensure that the Communist Party had more information about the economy’s leadership. Entrepreneurs once were given space to grow, but under Mr. XI, officials dictate what industries prosper and which will break. A more open economy, driven by market demand and not the political mandate, could expand the ranks, and influence, or the businesses of China and middle -class consumers.
But that could have raised a challenge for the control of the parties to society.
“This is not an economy that a statist government wants, and that is why the sub -consumption has recognized the long leg as a problem, even at the highest level of the government,” said Yasheng Huang, an expert in the Chinese economy at the Massachusetts management institute. But “there are no comparable legs,” he added.
Experts have long argued that social welfare spending would make China’s economy more balanced and less vulnerable to the West. Chinese economists have urged the government to invest in hospitals and pensions, and to help the hundreds of millions of rural migrants living in the city to qualify for urban benefits. Such steps are considered crucial to encourage common Chinese citizens to save less and spend more, contributing more to the country’s growth.
Some experts are the same questioning whether Mr. XI should challenge the United States so aggressively, instead of following the famous opinion of an anterior upper leader, Deng Xiaoping: “hides its strength, wait for its time.”
“China has become so ambitious without reaching the status of superpower yet,” said Shen Dingli, a scholar based in Shanghai that focuses on the ties between the United States and China.
Mr. Shen gave the expansive claims of Beijing in the Southern China Sea; The erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy; And the avalanche of Chinese exports that make another country compete in commerce. Tasks together, have removed much of the world, contributing to what is equivalent to a calculation for Mr. XI.
China once had a “favorable external environment” to develop as a nation, but has a “deteriorated” bone, Shen said. “It’s very unfortunate.”
Daisuke wakabayashi Seoul contributed reports and Berry Wang and Joy Dong Of Hong Kong.
