Xi Is Ratcheting Up China's Pain Threshold For A Long Fight With Trump

Censorship and surveillance have helped keep the Communist Party in control, and they are getting better

- Josh Chin

As President Trump tries to play hardball in his trade war with Xi Jinping, he faces an adversary who has armed China to play a long and potentially painful game in its contest with the U.S.

In the weeks since the U.S. president first slapped sky-high tariffs on China, Beijing has responded with defiance. A spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry posted on X footage from 1953 of Mao Zedong promising to fight to the end against U.S.-led forces in the Korean War. "We are Chinese," she wrote. "We don't back down."

The Mao post and other messages from Beijing highlight what China sees as one of its core advantages against the U.S.: While Trump and his Republican backers are vulnerable to the whims of American voters, the party that Mao built is deeply entrenched, having maintained power through more than seven decades despite war, famine, political upheaval and financial crises.

Xi isn't resting on those laurels. Since an earlier trade war during the first Trump administration, he has intensified his grip on the country's leadership and spent lavishly reinforcing the authoritarian tools that underpin the party's longevity, including enhancements of the world's most sophisticated systems for censorship and surveillance.

The Chinese leader wants to harden his country specifically for a confrontation with the U.S., urging officials to engage in what he calls "extreme scenario thinking."

Trump has already struck a more conciliatory tone this week, saying he wants to enter into negotiations with Beijing and is willing to lower the 14.5% tariffs he has imposed on China in his second term.

The White House hasn't said what it ultimately hopes to achieve in negotiations with China. Any push to significantly reduce the U.S.'s $295 billion trade deficit would require China to fundamentally change its economic model.