He Lifeng had to set aside his passion for chess during the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution. It was forbidden because it was considered a board game of the evil Western bourgeoisie. He was far from being bourgeois. He grew up in Xingning, a small, then very poor county in southern China. Although he was not a wealthy urbanite from the big city, he did not escape Mao Zedong's rural reeducation programs and was sent to work on a farm in Fujian province.
Over five decades later, the farmer He (70 years old) is Vice Premier of China and is leading the key economic body of the Asian superpower. Until now, he was a little-known figure outside his country. But He is emerging from anonymity on the international stage these days because he is in charge of directing the negotiations in the new trade war unleashed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
After the Cultural Revolution, following a decade on the farm, He spent a couple of years working at a hydroelectric plant. He then moved to the port city of Xiamen, also in the south, to study at the university and earn a Ph.D. in Economics. During those years, he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and began to dabble in local politics.
The farm boy stood out in the administration for the ambitious plans he presented to boost the strategically important port of Xiamen, located just across from Taiwan, overlooking the disputed South China Sea. He became Vice Mayor of Xiamen in 1985 and later became a member of the Provincial Standing Committee, the CCP body present in all regions overseeing local policies.
He moved closer to the capital when he was sent in 2009 to prosperous Tianjin, adjacent to Beijing, to lead the construction of the first pilot free trade zone in the northern part of the country. In 2014, he made the leap to the political center as the deputy party secretary of the important National Development and Reform Commission, China's main economic planning agency, which he chaired in 2017.
Four years later, He became one of the four Vice Premiers of China, the most important of them at the moment: the economic czar of the world's second-largest economy. He was appointed director of a key economic body of the Communist Party, the Central Commission for Finance and Economic Affairs, and also responsible for the office overseeing the vast financial sector.
He is now leading the negotiations of the new trade war unleashed by Trump by imposing 10% tariffs on Chinese products. He takes over this task from veteran Liu He, the architect of the trade deal during the first Trump administration. Unlike his predecessor, He does not speak English, which is a disadvantage because, despite having many translators on both teams, key negotiations are always face-to-face, and sharing a language helps to have frank conversations without intermediaries. This was important in resolving the previous trade dispute.
During the first trade war, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Chinese products worth about $550 billion, and Beijing, in turn, responded by applying tariffs on U.S. products worth $185 billion.
On Tuesday, Beijing entered the new tit-for-tat by announcing 10% to 15% tariffs on certain U.S. products, from liquefied gas to oil, in addition to new restrictions on imports of critical minerals and an unusual antitrust investigation against the tech giant Google.
Shortly after, Trump downplayed his rival's retaliation but also tried to justify the trade war he had reignited. "The deficit with China is about a trillion dollars. Think about it, a trillion dollars. They are using our money to build their army," the Republican told a group of journalists. According to U.S. government data, the U.S. trade deficit with China amounted to $270 billion in 2024, down from $279 billion in 2023.
The farmer He will have to deal with Trump's unpredictable trade moves. The Chinese politician is also a member of the powerful Politburo of the CCP, the top leadership body, and a trusted confidant of President Xi, with whom he has had a close relationship for four decades since they met in Xiamen.
At the end of last year, following Trump's victory - who during his campaign threatened China with 60% tariffs - He was laying the groundwork for trade war 2.0. He met with several American financial executives in Beijing and made overtures to Europe, stating that the Chinese government was considering various tariff cuts to boost foreign investment and trade with the European Union.