Comment: Xi Jinping prepares China for a long and brutal trade war

BEIJING: As the trade conflict escalates between China and the United States, classic Chinese movies about the war to resist America and Aid Korea, as the Korean War of the 1950s is known in China, have made a reappearance on Chinese public television in prime time.

This is one of the many signs in China suggesting what analysts now believe to be a protracted trade dispute with Washington.

Reluctant to accept the humiliating conditions demanded by Donald Trump to put an end to the year-long dispute between the two countries, Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist President, is preparing to lead his country into a generalized trade conflict with the major economic powers and technology of the world. , just as Mao Zedong sent Chinese "volunteers" to confront US forces during the Korean War for four long, bloody years in the 1950s.

"If the bulk of this deal concerns China and its country, it's totally unacceptable for a national audience," said one informed Beijing talks.

As with Mao's decision to enter the Korean conflict, Xi's choice at first sight seems unwise.

Sixty years ago, Mao's ill-equipped troops faced a technologically superior American military force in Korea. Today, the Chinese economy relies much more on exports to the United States than the United States to China.

After 30 years of almost double-digit growth, the world's second largest economy is also slowing down, raising growing concern among the middle class and private entrepreneurs about social mobility and the importance attached by Xi to state-owned enterprises. Meanwhile, the US economy is accelerating.

But just as Chinese forces have finally led the United States into a stalemate with a huge number of soldiers and a much greater tolerance for massive losses from the United States' superior firepower, Xi said he could lead a fruitful struggle on the scale of society in the commercial conflict.

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& # 39; NATIONAL TEAM & # 39; FROM CHINA

The Chinese authorities believe they have two distinct advantages over their US opponents in the next phase of the trade war. The first is the control levers that Mr. Trump can only dream of – or tweet -.

US institutions such as the Fed or the House of Representatives have resisted pressure from the US leader, but Xi needs only snap his fingers and the Chinese government, legislature, media and banking system will do the business.

Trump, his treasury secretary and chief economic advisor regularly try to "talk" about US stock markets. The Chinese Communist Party has a "national team" of state-owned brokerage firms, banks, and giant corporations to "buy back" Chinese markets when needed.

When the Shanghai Composite Index fell by nearly 6% to 2,906 points the day after the latest escalation of Mr. Trump's trade war, people informed of the Chinese government's response said that the company's economic growth has been slow. the national team had been informed that the "line in the sand" was 2,900. The next day, the SCI rebounded.

HISTORICAL GRIEVANCE

Mr. Xi's second advantage is a long-standing grievance against foreign powers that had previously "intimidated" and "humiliated" China – conveniently fueled, as it happens, by party media spokespeople. .

When the opening demands of the Trump administration trade talks were leaked last May, the indignation that many Chinese people felt was sincere.

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Friedrich Wu, a professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, sums up the feelings of many when he describes it as "a list of capitulation demands to which China has to bow."

"It's a return to the nineteenth century, when the Western and Japanese powers dictated all the terms of their humiliating and unequal treaties with a weak Qing dynasty," he says.

If there is a decoupling between the two economies, so be it. The Chinese people can bear more suffering than spoiled and proud Americans.

Trump, meanwhile, has to deal with powerful groups – farmers, Wall Street, retailers, consumers and free media, among others – who complain about the cost of his tariffs on imports from China and doubt the relevance of its strategy.