How China plans to rule global trade after Trump

Reuters review of Chinese policy papers shows systematic bid to neutralise US containment, but a huge trade surplus complicates its global ambitions, writes Joe Cash from Beijing

- Joe Cash

China sees an opening to turn President Donald Trump's tariffs to its advantage by reshaping global trade in ways that would insulate its $19 trillion economy from US pressure far into the future.

Beijing is exploiting the uncertainty created by Trump to try to stitch China's vast manufacturing base into the world’s biggest economic blocs, including the European Union, Gulf States and a trans-Pacific trade pact, a Reuters examination found. The push involves accelerating efforts to clinch some 20 trade deals in total, many years in the making, despite widespread concerns about China's overproduction, uneven market access and soft domestic demand.

A Reuters review of 100 Chinese-language articles by state-backed trade scholars written since 2017 reveals a systematic push by China's policy advisers to reverse-engineer US trade policy and neutralise Washington's containment strategy.

China is now putting that blueprint into action. The deal reached with Canada during Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January visit to Beijing — which slashes tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles — was the first of many aimed at breaking US leverage, according to interviews with 10 people, including Chinese officials and trade diplomats.

“Don’t interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake,” said one Chinese official of Trump's disruptive trade agenda.

The review, drawn from over 2,000 trade-strategy papers endorsed by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Cass) and Peking University, which advise top leaders, shows policy insiders broadly accept that painful structural change is a price worth paying for China's long-term dominance of global commerce. The papers’ contents are reported here for the first time.

If successful, Beijing could upend more than a decade of US trade policy by placing itself at the heart of a new, China-shaped multilateral order, two Western diplomats said.