China is in a competition of “economic resilience” with the United States, which means it must double down on strengthening domestic industrial capacity, according to Zheng Yongnian, a leading Chinese political scientist and government adviser.
In an interview with domestic media published Wednesday, Zheng accused the U.S. of “internationalizing its domestic problems” of inequality, populism, and polarization. “The United States has benefited the most from globalization but has not managed income distribution well. This is their own governance problem, not China’s problem,” he said.
In response to the escalating trade war, China must focus on strengthening manufacturing and the real economy to increase economic resilience. “Only in this way can we remain undefeatable in our long-term competition with the U.S.,” he said.
The interview has been widely shared on Chinese social media, with over 100,000 views on WeChat. Zheng’s call for greater self-sufficiency echoes the rallying cry of “fight to the end” that has gone viral in China’s tightly-controlled media discourse.
U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports currently stand at 125 percent following President Donald Trump’s announcement on April 9. In a social media post, Trump granted a 90-day pause to “reciprocal tariffs” for dozens of countries, except for China, which saw its tariff rate increased further. Meanwhile, China’s 84 percent retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports came into effect on April 10.
The same day, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian said that the United States is using tariffs as a “weapon” and seriously damaging the global economic order.
Zheng is one of China’s most high-profile public intellectuals known to have the ear of Chinese officials. Currently the dean of the School of Public Policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Zheng’s book “The China Model: Experience and Challenges” is a designated textbook of the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China.
In recent days, Zheng has publicly condemned Trump’s plan to reindustrialize the United States as “unfeasible” and the tariffs as “selfish.” However, he has also called for vigilance among Chinese leaders against underestimating the strength of the U.S.
“The vitality of the U.S. has never been in its government, but rather in its society and capital,” the professor wrote in a commentary published on April 7, after Trump’s initial announcement of tariffs on April 2 but before the latest escalations. Zheng noted that the Trump administration’s efforts to deregulate and reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy have the potential to reshape U.S. society despite the skepticism of many American elites.
“In fact, the [mainstream U.S.] economics community bears great responsibility for the current state of the U.S. economy,” he wrote, suggesting that Chinese companies and policymakers were quicker to learn the lessons of Trump’s first presidential term than their American counterparts.
“Today, neoliberal economic thinking has no traction in China.”
While boasting that few countries can compare with China in terms of resilience, the professor, who was trained at Peking University and Princeton University, nonetheless took aim at Chinese nationalists who are already declaring victory.
“Although many people understand that there are no winners in trade wars or tariff wars, only losers, there are still a large number of people domestically, especially on social media, who feel that we have already won.”
“This is very dangerous as it would mean that the West is confusing us… which could ultimately cause us to make strategic mistakes,” he wrote. Zheng warned Chinese people not to put much stock in recent coverage by Western outlets such as The New York Times and The Economist that frame Trump’s actions as benefiting China at the expense of the United States.
“People must have a clear understanding of this – Trump will not make China great again. Only we can make our country great again.”
Despite being a well-known defender of the “China model,” Zheng has previously highlighted the links between growing nationalism in Asia and increased likelihood of conflict in the region, while stopping short of blaming the Chinese government.
In his latest commentary, he warned that the fallout from the escalating trade war must be managed to prevent direct conflict between the United States and China, especially if Trump’s tariffs fail to deliver his desired outcomes.