The Chinese government has spoken twice in a month with an unprecedented forcefulness in relation to the United States. This Tuesday has been the Ministry of Commerce that has expressed China’s disposition to “fight until the end”, in its reply to successive US tariffs at the beginning of March it was an exterior spokesman who declared that, after the second barrage from Washington, China was “prepared for war, for any type of war.” The brave tone does not detract from that of the US president, Donald Trump, but the Chinese government does not give stitch without thread. Many analysts believe that Beijing has been preparing for this moment. Trump’s intentions were not only public, but were endorsed by their first mandate: China does not forget the 2018 tariff garrotazo. Its 2025 response is much more determined, from the first increase in customs rates of 10%, which happened another of the same percentage. In both cases, the Chinese response was relatively fast and sophisticated, but not frontal, to give a chance to the decala. He preferred to point to a bouquet of key sectors in his tariff response, accompanied by restrictions for strategic metals. Last week, however, the 34% tax of a tacada had a symmetrical replica and virtually automatically. China has been diversifying markets for years and at present less than 14% of its exports go to the first power Emperor Nero played the harp while Rome burned. Trump, on the other hand, in the Neoclassic Washington, upon his return from playing golf, continued to fire the fire on Monday, while hundreds of billions of dollars continued to vanished from this to west, as the markets opened. But his threat of a 50% coupling to China – a huge 104% accumulated – if he does not withdraw on Tuesday his replica does not seem to have had an effect. At the moment he has closed the escape routes, with world trade hostage. If I expected Beijing to watch the white flag, as Hanoi did, he seems to have been poorly advised. Vietnam – although personifies the limits of American power – has many more incentives to sit down and less tools at your fingertips. About 35% of Vietnamese exports go to the US market, representing almost 30% of Vietnam’s GDP alone. On the other hand, China has been diversifying markets for years and currently less than 14% of its exports go to the first power (compared to 19% in 2018), which represents 2.5% of its GDP (before, 4%). Trump can badly bad, but not to bleed it, since its GDP growth last year was double: 5%. Percentage that aspires to repeat this year, although it is now clear that to approach you will need a large dose of stimuli. The Financial District of Shanghai Hector Retamal / AFP Beijing believes to enjoy margin, however that incentives its internal market of 1.4 billion consumers, who have folded their purchasing power again in just over a decade. It is true that consumption does not accompany because the deployment of the welfare state, which started in the second term of Hu Jintao, is still far from the European parameters. That means that Chinese families save well above Westerners, for the vicissitudes of life: unemployment, disease, educational expenses, old age. Nothing is pink in China since the Covid hit. Public indebtedness has multiplied, by stimulus policies and to compensate for deliberate effort, by the government of Joe Biden, to stop Chinese growth in order to prevent or delay a change in hegemony. Despite the relocations of American, Japanese or Korean manufacturers to Vietnam, Cambodia or Bangladesh, their exposure to China remains capital letters. Starting with Elon Musk, whose electric car firm, Tesla, obtained so far half of its benefits from its Shanghai factory. Lee also has also prepared for this moment weaving alliances with countries on the five continents, many of which retain grievances with respect to their old colonizers. China, unlike the US, Japan and several European powers, was not one of them. The infrastructure of the new Silk routes encourage the opening of these emerging markets. To this we must add the diplomatic influence through the BRICS group, of the Shanghai or the Asian Investment Bank in Infrastructure, based in Beijing. The United States, certainly, has fearsome financial weapons, starting with the supremacy of the dollar. But China has reasons to believe that, if Russia has largely raffled western sanctions, finding markets for its hydrocarbons, the large factory in the world can do the same. The fear, in this case, comes from the markets that fear being flooded by the discount stocks that stop landing in the US. Beijing is not financially innerme, as deduced from their reserves in gold and currencies. It is true that, less than a year after being elected general secretary of the Communist Party of China (PCCH), Xi Jinping reversed the purchase of US debt, which had just played a roof. The colossal figure of 1,316 billion dollars has been reduced without haste but without pauses to the current 760,000 million. Even so, China is the second US Treasury bond holder, after Japan (matched, if we add Hong Kong), with a great destructive capacity if he decided to detach them from them at once (although he would also suffer the consequences). Citizens of Beijing, with traditional dresses, walk in front of an Apple S Wang Zhao / AFP China, finally, has room to depreciate the yuan – it is already happening – as well as levels of public indebtedness and unemployment that, even deteriorating, are more manageable than in most of the world. “The sky will not fall on us,” the Chinese Deputy Minister of Economy unfolds before a group of Western Executives, yesterday, whom he asked to make a commitment to “rationality.” The firmness of his government, came to say, had no other purpose than to return Washington to a “rational” path. The PCCH, converted into a flag bearer of the free market due to abandonment of the United States of America – although more in the foreign markets than in the own – it has been courting their own private entrepreneurs for a few months, promising greater equity to public companies in access to tenders. The universal earthquake caused this year by the Open of Deepseek joins other great hits of Chinese technocapitalism, from Alibaba -which Jack ma rehabilitated- to Tiktok, who does not want to die of success – not being stabbed – in the US .. meanwhile, the Chinese defense budget continues in its line of recent years, with an increase of 7.2%. Far from the purpose of some European states to duplicate it from here to 2030. China does not need, for the moment, to resort to a Keynesianism of arms cutting to keep its industry afloat, despite the current swell. If the Chinese industrial base were converted into war economy, under the iron control of the PCCH, then there would be reasons to set to tremble. All this in a world that, according to Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang, lives “accelerated changes as they have not seen in a century.” (He said it a month before Hong Kong Hang Seng index hit his worst batacazo since 1997, fell more than 13%). But a China with greater confidence in itself believes that wave can surf. Donald Trump, on the other hand, threatens to reverse it, put it in a sidewalk, redirect or creak it to taxes. The next wave, in the form of unemployment for some and loud for others, promises to soak them all. Although the breath in the markets on Tuesday, timidly in green, would show that there is still an umbrella.
