Tag Archives: Xi Jinping

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 18.

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            Americans have come to depend on cheap Chinese products.  Conversely, China has come to depend on massive exports of its goods to the United States.  Hence, President Donald Trump’s imposition of a 145 percent tariff on imports from China will shock both the American and Chinese systems.[1] 

            What does the United States get from China?  At least 75 percent of electric fans, dolls, video game consoles, tricycles, food processors, and smart phones.[2]  Apple, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard all source many of their products from Asia (China, Taiwan).  The tariffs could push the price of a basic iPhone 16 from $799 to $1,140.[3]  China also produces and exports renewable energy equipment, lithium batteries, and electric vehicles. 

            Much of the American reaction to the trade war with China has been “Eeeek!”  One newspaper warned  of “an economic crisis that could leave America poorer for generations.”  A West Coast port executive said that “essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased.”  As a result, one business economist[4] warned of “empty shelves in U.S. stores in a few weeks,” and “Covid-like shortages for consumers.”  These stoppages will cascade into job losses for longshoremen, truckers and railroads, and retail sales.[5] There could be a grievous toy shortage at Christmas because 80 percent of America’s toys are made in China.[6] 

What does China get from the United States?  Soybeans.  Some kinds of computer chips.  And many jobs.  All the stuff no longer going to America either has to be sold somewhere else, or stock-piled in warehouses, or not made at all.  Neither of the last two is sustainable, politically or economically, for long.  So China has to find a new target for its exports. 

Which country will blink first?  Is there a reasonable compromise that can be negotiated? 

Trump has wobbled on China to a degree.  He exempted some consumer electronics (smart phones, laptops) from most of the China tariffs.  He also indicated that he was ready to negotiate with China and that Xi Jinping had called him.  At the same time, he seems determined to “decouple” the economies of the two countries.[7]  At the very least, he said, “China will probably eat those tariffs.  Everything is going to be fine.” 

For their part, the Chinese seem not to have anticipated the “speed and ferocity” of the American trade counter-attack on China’s economic strategy.[8]  China’s public response has been to dig in.  “Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst.”[9]  Threats of retaliation abound.  When Trump said that Xi Jinping had called about tariffs, the Chinese Foreign Ministry basically called Trump a liar.  Hard to know which of those two to believe. 

[1] “Decoupling: The U.S.-China trade divorce, The Week, 25 April 2025, p. 34.    

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Inflation: How tariffs could push up prices,” The Week, 18 April 2025, p. 17.    

[4] As in an economist employed by a business, in this case an asset management firm. 

[5] “Trump shrugs off warnings over trade war costs,” The Week, 9 May 2025, p. 4. 

[6] Feels heartless denying kids their hearts’ desire at Christmas.  Still, Boxing Day can be a time for repentance. 

[7] The historian Stephen Kotkin has observed that Trump often talks out of both sides of his mouth, but if you look at what he actually does, you can tell what he really means.  His remarks bore on Iran’s nuclear program.  He thinks Trump means to stop it, whatever that may require.  There’s no reason not to apply the same view to China trade. 

[8] “Decoupling: The U.S.-China trade divorce, The Week, 25 April 2025, p. 34. 

[9] Given China’s behavior toward its neighbors in Taiwan and the Philippines, this is comic. 

War with China.

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            At the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the defeated Nationalists withdrew from Chinese mainland territories.  Some entered the remote border areas of Laos and Thailand.  Most of them crossed the Formosa Straits to the island of Taiwan.  Here they created their own country. 

The Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) has never recognized Taiwan as independent.  In similar fashion, it refused to recognize any of the territorial losses during the age of European imperialism.  Where it could do so, it made good its claims: Shanghai and Tibet.  Other places had to wait for their “liberation.”  Recently, China has retaken Hong Kong and Macao.  Now, attention has shifted to Taiwan. 

            As part of President Richard Nixon’s “opening to China,” American policy toward Taiwan became more ambiguous.  In 1979, the United States ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan while re-establishing them with the PRC.  In 1982, the Reagan administration said that it would not pursue “a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or [of] ‘one China, one Taiwan’.”  All subsequent administrations have made clear American opposition of a declaration of independence by Taiwan.  They have believed that such a declaration would trigger an invasion by the PRC.  If that happened, then the United States might be drawn into a wart with China.  This would upset many apple-carts.[1]  So, American policy effectively has been to trust in the eventual evolution of the PRC toward the kind of society which Taiwan would willingly join.[2] 

            For the United States, the situation is more complicated than before.  For one thing, some serious observers of military affairs doubt that the United States now could win a conventional war with China in the Western Pacific.  Rearmament and rebuilding the defense industrial base could take some time.  What id China pounces before then?  For another thing, there is a suspicion that China’s aims extend well beyond merely regaining “lost” territory.  Taiwan forms the center of what strategists call the “first island chain” cutting off China from easy access to the Pacific.  Japan and the Philippines are the two other links in the chain, but it is anchored at either end by South Korea and Vietnam.  What if the Chinese determination to “restore” Taiwan forms merely an entering wedge for a larger plan of aggression?  For yet another thing, Taiwan has become a major industrial economy.  In particular, it is home to the Taiwan Semi-conductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC if you want to go check the contents of your IRA).  Chinese rule would both mark a further shift in the balance of power and harm America’s economy. 

            In 2023, the CIA assessed that Xi Jinping had instructed military leaders to “be ready [to invade Taiwan] by 2027.”[3]  In mid-December 2025, the navy of the PRC carried out maneuvers in the waters around Taiwan.  The 90-ship group was, in the view of the Taiwanese military, practicing a “blockade exercise.”[4]  Blockade would be one way of bringing Taiwan to its knees.  Bombing would be another.  Invasion—amphibious and airborne–would be yet another. 

            All this is worth public discussion.  Now and not later.  We don’t have much “later.” 

[1] See David Sacks in While Pledging to Defend Taiwan from China, Biden Shifted on Taiwan Independence. Here’s Why That Matters. | Council on Foreign Relations 

[2] See: Wilkins Micawber.  Sounds like goofy American optimism, until you consider the alternative. 

[3] “The World at a Glance,” The Week, 14 February 2025, p. 9. 

[4] “The World at a Glance,” The Week, 20 December 2024, p. 9. 

ChiMerica 5.

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            For decades after the death of Mao Zedong, China’s national policies were set by Deng Xiaoping and his like-minded successors.  China opened itself to the world, carried out major reforms, and pursued rapid economic growth.  An enhanced international power would surely come as a result of these policies.  Yet, it seemed to many foreign observers, that China would progressively integrate itself into a larger world system.  These hopes have been abridged.

How should we understand Xi Jinping, leader-for-life of contemporary China?  A recent book on Xi’s political thought as revealed in his speeches and writings cast some light on the issue.[1]  Xi possesses—or is possessed by—vast ambition for China.  He aims at the “rejuvenation” of his country by a Leninist dictatorship.  He wants to return China to its one-time status as the greatest nation in the world.  On the one hand, Xi’s aims mean asserting the power of the Communist Party as the guide of the nation in all political and economic matters.  He found the Chinese Communist Party demoralized by a loss of purpose.  He found it riddled with corruption.  Xi’s anti-corruption campaigns began by purging many of his enemies or rivals, but they seem not to have stopped there.  Xi’s reassertion of party primacy gives him a powerful lever to guide and to mobilize the Chinese people.   

On the other hand, Xi’s aims require displacing the United States from its long role as guardian of what might be called “American Asia”: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam.  As one of the means to this end, China has carried out a massive military build-up.  China has been asserting its claim to the South China Sea as a kind of Chinese lake, rather than an open international waterway. 

            Xi’s ambition is bad for the United States and bad for the states of “American Asia.”  Among these states, Japan serves as the linch-pin of the American position and it is a natural bete-noire for Xi.  Japan’s brutal behavior in Asia during the Second World War gives Xi’s propaganda a lot to work with in mobilizing Chinese opinion.  China’s battering of the fishing fleets and coast guards of the peripheral states around the South China Sea aims at controlling one of Japan’s main lines of trade. 

            Xi has been at this for a dozen years.  He has set his target date for the completion of China’s rejuvenation as 2050.  The end date is well after Xi will have shuffled off the scene.  He has been working hard to instill “Xi Jinping Thought” as the guiding ideology for his country. 

            The United States has been struggling to respond to the new China.  The presidential transition from the Democrat Joe Biden to the Republican Donald Trump requires a review of the essential questions.  How widely understood is the seriousness of China’s challenge?  Can anyone craft a plan for a successful response to China’s challenge?  Is it possible for the United States to mobilize the military and diplomatic resources needed to meet the challenge?   

            Countries close to China seem to profess the most confidence in the American alliance.  Perhaps they have no choice but to believe it.  Countries farther away in Southeast Asia are more skeptical.  One theory is that the evident inadequate level of American military power gives them pause.  So, is America bluffing when it claims that it will support its allies?  If so, then Asian countries will spot that like a leopard spots a limp. 

[1] Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung, The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (2025), brought to my attention by Walter Russell Mead, “Does Biden Take China’s Threat Seriously?” WSJ, 9 April 2024. 

The Asian Century 10.

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            “China is the most significant international threat that America—and the global West generally—now faces.  And that will be true for the rest of the Century.”[1]  Certainly that seems to be the intention of Xi Jinping.  He has been deploying China’s enormous economic power to claim the leading role in Asia for China.  First in his sights is Hong Kong, regardless of the terms of the “hand-over agreement” with “Little England.”  Next is Taiwan, itself an economic powerhouse.  Xi’s Belt and Road initiative is also shouldering China into a role in many other corners of the globe. 

            For its part, what John Bolton calls “the global West” seems to be knocked back on its heels.  The phrase “crisis of democracy” is frequently used.[2]  The financial crisis and the drawn-out “Great Recession,” “globalization,” and mass immigration (much of it unregulated and unwelcome) all cast into doubt the effectiveness of the democratic state as a model for progress.   The same forces intensified nationalist forces, which sometimes take an authoritarian form.  Both Brexit and Donald Trump’s version of “America First” show how far beyond the fringe this mood has spread.  All these developments may have sharpened China’s appetite. 

            Much remains unknown.  Is the “global West” really suffering a crisis of democracy?  Or is it just having a fit of the sulks after victory in the long struggle with aggressive tyrannies? 

            How strong is China really?  Deng Xiaoping had set the country on the capitalist road with sweeping political and economic reforms intended to create a market economy.  Chinese industriousness and thrift would do the rest.  By and large, this vision has come true.  Undoubtedly, Japan and the United States provided a lot of help through investments and voluntary transfer of intellectual property, but China’s own efforts explain the lion’s share of its success.  Now China has the second largest economy in the world. 

Now some observers see strains on the foundations of China’s power.  Xi Jinping has reversed course on many reforms.  He is moving the Party and the State more and more tightly under his control.  He is moving China’s economy back toward Party and State control.  If a market economy and global integration raised China up, then the new course might lay it low. 

            In times of crisis, China does things that reveal the true nature of its government: brutal and secretive.  The suppression of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, the repression of what Americans call “diversity” (Tibet, Uighurs), and its hiding of the truth about Covid-19 in 2019-2020 provide examples of a robust dictatorship responding to its own fears.  Is China’s foreign policy another example of a state acting from fear, rather than from strength?  Taiwan’s rival model of economic organization effects can’t be ignored by people on the mainland.  One might see the fixation on Taiwan as driven by concern for present problems as much as by historical memory of the Qing dynasty. 

            There are real dangers here.  Both Lenin and Hitler refused to wait on History.  They tried to hurry it forward to the destination they had appointed for it. 

[1] John Bolton (Yes, that John Bolton), “Beijing Never Got the Memo,” WSJ, 16 November 2020, review of Dan Blumenthal, The China Nightmare: The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State (2020). 

[2] Not without reason.  See: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2020/11/04/crisis-of-democracy/  

The Asian Century 4 16 July 2019.

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In 1976, Mao Zedong died.  For two years, Hua Guofeng occupied the nominal leadership of China.  Then, in 1978, Deng Xiaoping came to power.  Both men, and many others, recognized that China’s vast potential had remained un-tapped during the long reign of Mao.  The party orthodoxy that peasants formed the backbone of a Communist society in Asia had stifled all economic progress.  Those peasants were themselves trapped in a vast system of collective farms that stifled initiative and productivity.  Marxist and Maoist economic ideas—the only ones taught to China’s educated elite—provided no useful guide to economic reality.[1]  To “save” itself, China would have to change.[2]  For one thing, it would have to become a truly industrial society.

To accomplish this transformation without re-inventing the wheel, China would need foreign advisors who knew how to run an industrial economy.[3]  Initially, these advisors came from the then still-existing Communist bloc.  Soon it became all too apparent that the Communist advisors didn’t have the slightest idea of how to build or manage an industrial economy.   Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, this reality imposed a frightening and unwelcome change of course.  China would have to turn to the capitalist West.  So it did.

The process began under Hua.  It took the form of a cautious experimentalism.  The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences sounds innocuous enough, or even boring to anyone who has attended a scholarly conference.  However, it provided the home for intense intellectual debates about China’s path forward.  In Sichuan Province, the first experiments with dismantling the collective farms began.  Consideration began of the ideas that would lead to the creation of the “Special Economic Zones.”

The need to save China by changing China had a wide constituency among leaders.  However, it also faced dogged opposition among more traditional Communist Party leaders.  To overcome this opposition, and to sustain and speed-up the pace of change, required a leader of exceptional character.  Deng Xiaoping proved the right man at the right time.  He combined great political skill, a theatrical affability, and ruthless determination.

The speed with which China changed course is fascinating.  So, too, is the enthusiasm in many quarters for both change and contact with Western thought.  Western economists were invited to visit and confer with Chinese leaders.  Chinese scholars, officials, managers and engineers, and—most important—students began to go abroad in growing numbers.  They absorbed and brought back to China the ideas and practices of the West.[4]  China’s history has been one of prolonged periods of hostility to foreign ideas interspersed with briefer periods of openness to foreign ideas.  The spread of Buddhism from India to China, and the curiosity about the West that allowed the Jesuits to operate in China offer earlier examples of this openness.

Now, Xi Jinping seems to be slamming the doors.

[1] See: Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea.  As one fictional character summarized the real Communist achievement: “boiler suits, prison camps, and a damn long march to nowhere.”

[2] This same truth had been recognized by the Japanese more than a century earlier.

[3] Julian Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China (2016).

[4] Inevitably and predictably, many of these ideas and practices had nothing to do with economics.