One of the most viral videos these days on Chinese social media, shared by key Communist Party figures, has been a speech by the late supreme leader Mao Zedong about China's entry into the Korean War (1953) to fight against American forces. That was the only time the armies of the Asian giant and the United States clashed in direct combat. "As for the duration of this war, it is not for us to decide... No matter how long it lasts, we will never surrender. We will fight until final victory," Mao declared.
The trade war launched by Donald Trump has awakened a Chinese nationalist sentiment that had been dormant for some time. On Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of X, and on Douyin (the local version of TikTok), there is a wave of posts calling for a boycott of American products. Many merchants also say they will stop selling items made in the US.
Even some store, restaurant, and supermarket owners have gone to the extreme of stating that they will ask for the nationality of all foreigners entering their business. If any customer is from the United States, they will be charged extra. "The additional service charge for attending American customers will be 145%," read a post on a restaurant's social media account in Hangzhou, southern China, referring to the sum of all tariffs that Trump has imposed this year on imported Chinese products.
Anti-American sentiment spreads across many forums in China's censored cyberspace, while the most vocal officials repeatedly quote the last phrase Mao uttered in his viral speech: "We will fight until the end."
China retaliated on Friday with 125% tariffs on the US and made it clear that continuing this exchange of blows was absurd because, with high tariffs, American products currently have no commercial viability in the vast market of the Asian superpower. "We are Chinese. We do not fear provocations. We do not cower," wrote Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a recent post that was widely shared on X by several Chinese embassies' accounts.
Strong nationalism is one of the tools that Xi Jinping's government has relied on several times to maintain social stability in turbulent times at home. But Trump's commercial onslaught hits the world's largest exporter at a time when China is grappling with a long real estate and deflationary crisis, in addition to weak domestic consumption and high youth unemployment.
Prolonged pandemic closures led to a slowdown in economic growth, and there are already several analyses questioning whether China will achieve its 5% GDP growth target for this year. For example, with the effects of the trade war, Goldman Sachs recently lowered its China growth forecast to 4%. This forecast coincided with new economic data on consumer prices, which continued to fall in March, further stretching deflation and with consumers still hesitant to spend as before.
Those most alarmed in China by Trump's tariffs were electronics exporters. These, along with machinery, furniture, and toy manufacturers, accounted for over half of Chinese shipments to the US last year. But Chinese suppliers, like major US multinationals such as Apple and Tesla - which have many factories in China - breathed a sigh of relief over the weekend after Trump revealed plans to exempt certain electronic devices (smartphones, computers, hard drives, memory chips, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment) from his so-called reciprocal tariffs.
This backtrack seemed to acknowledge Beijing's indispensable role in the global supply chain for numerous high-tech products: last year, the Asian country supplied over 70% of computers to the United States. However, uncertainty returned on Monday after the US president specified that many small Chinese electronics companies would not be covered by these exemptions. The confusion in the Asian country is palpable.
This week, a Reuters report indicated that the Chinese government has shifted into "war mode," strengthening departments involved in the tariff battle with Trump. Meanwhile, the Chinese president is on a significant tour of Southeast Asia to strengthen ties with neighbors amid global turbulence. The first stop is Vietnam. Next, Xi will travel to Malaysia and Cambodia. All are important manufacturing centers where China, during Trump's first trade war, relocated some factories producing goods for the American market.