How China went from courting Trump to 'never yield' tariff defiance
World
How China went from courting Trump to ‘never yield’ tariff defiance
BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China has put civilian government officials in Beijing on “wartime footing” and ordered a diplomatic charm offensive aimed at encouraging other countries to push back against US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Communist Party propaganda officials have played a leading role in framing China’s response, one of the people said, with government spokespeople posting defiant clips on social media featuring former leader Mao Zedong saying “we will never yield.”
As part of the “wartime” posture, the details of which are being reported by Reuters for the first time, bureaucrats in the foreign affairs and commerce ministries have been ordered to cancel vacation plans and keep mobile phones switched on around the clock, two of the people said. Departments covering the US have also been beefed up, including with officials who worked on China’s response to Trump’s first term, they said.
The combative all-of-government approach after Trump’s “Liberation Day" salvo marked a hard turn for Beijing, which had tried to avoid a spiralling trade war. For months, Chinese diplomats had tried to establish a high-level channel of communication with Trump’s administration to defend what China’s cabinet has described in state media campaigns as a “win-win” trading relationship.
Optimistic Chinese observers even held out hope for a grand bargain with Trump over trade, TikTok - and perhaps even Taiwan.
This account of how China shifted from seeking a deal to punching back with retaliatory tariffs and threatening all-out defiance is based on interviews with more than a dozen people, including US and Chinese government officials, as well as other diplomats and scholars briefed on bilateral exchanges.
Four of them also described how Beijing's diplomats have been engaging other governments targeted by Trump tariffs, including sending letters seeking cooperation to several countries. Longstanding US allies in Europe, Japan and South Korea have also been contacted, two people said.
Most of the people spoke on condition of anonymity to describe confidential government deliberations.
China's ministry of foreign affairs did not return a request for comment. A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington said in response to Reuters' questions that Beijing did not want to fight trade wars “but is not scared of them.”
“If the US puts its own interests over the public good of the international community and sacrifices all countries’ legitimate interests for its own hegemony, it will for sure meet stronger opposition from the international community,” the official said.
The South Korean and Japanese embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on talks between their countries and China.
After the initial Chinese retaliation, Trump said: "China played it wrong, they panicked - the one thing they cannot afford to do!” He has also suggested that Beijing wanted to make a deal but “they just don't know how quite to go about it."
US officials have also blamed China for the impasse because its trillion-dollar trade surplus with the world is the result of what they see as abuses of the global commerce system that haven’t been successfully addressed through years of negotiations.
Trump on April 2 stunned the world with massive tariffs that he said would prevent countries like China from “ripping off” the US Chinese leader Xi Jinping ditched official caution and issued a patriotic message casting doubt on whether American voters could bear as much hardship as the Chinese.
The ‘Liberation Day’ levies have since been suspended for all countries except China for 90 days. With some exceptions, trade of goods between China and the US is now largely frozen, and Beijing is starting to crack down on trade of services, while warning its citizens against travel to the US and putting curbs on import of American films.
POLITE START AND A QUICK STALL
Even after Trump was elected on the promise of high tariffs, relations with Beijing got off to a polite start. Trump invited Xi to his inauguration, which was eventually attended by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng.
Things started deteriorating soon after.
During the first Trump administration, Beijing had several high-level channels of communication, most notably between then-ambassador Cui Tiankai and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
There isn’t an equivalent channel this time around, according to a Beijing official familiar with Sino-American ties, adding that China wasn’t sure who spoke for Trump on their relationship.
A Trump administration official said in response to Reuters' questions that the US had "made clear to China that we want working-level contact to continue... but will not engage for the sake of engagement and in dialogues that do not advance American interests."
Chinese ambassador to the US Xie Feng made unsuccessful attempts before the election to reach Trump’s billionaire ally Elon Musk, said a US scholar who recently visited China for unofficial exchanges that Beijing has historically used to communicate with Washington policymakers.
Musk didn’t return a request for comment.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi tried to meet Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a China hawk who is sanctioned by Beijing, during a February visit to New York to chair a United Nations session but did not secure a meeting. There has been no publicly disclosed exchange between the two sides’ top diplomats beyond a frosty phone call in late January.
Wang was also unsuccessful in his efforts to meet on that trip with National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, said a person familiar with the matter. Wang had held numerous talks with Waltz’s predecessor, Jake Sullivan, including an exchange that led to a rare prisoner swap.
The White House believes that China should send a senior trade official instead of Wang to speak on commerce matters, according to a person familiar with the administration’s thinking.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said he was “not engaging with China” and that Trump wants to negotiate directly with Xi.
Trump told reporters this week that he would be willing to meet Xi, whom he also described as a friend. He has not detailed any specifics of a possible deal.
The Trump administration official said the US had repeatedly asked Chinese diplomats if Xi would request a phone call with Trump and “the answer has consistently been ‘no.’”
International relations expert Zhao Minghao at Shanghai’s Fudan University said such outreach “totally doesn’t work in terms of the Chinese policymaking system.”
“For the Chinese side, usually there is agreement and work on the working level and then we can arrange the summit,” he said.
The way “countries which have tried to negotiate have been treated so far this year also certainly has not done much to encourage China to sit down at the table,” said Lynn Song, Chief Economist for Greater China at ING Bank.
There are some ongoing conversations between lower-level officials on both sides, according to one Chinese and three US officials, though some working groups put in place by the Joe Biden administration to deal with commercial disputes, as well as treasury and military issues have been frozen.
