Media Type: Article
Days after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement, Guan Tao, the global chief economist at BOCI China, assesses the impacts of the intensifying U.S.-China trade war. He compares this round of tariffs with the earlier tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term, concluding that their impacts on China this year may be similar to those of 2019. However, Guan views the external environment as increasingly suppressive and unpredictable, arguing that it will force China to “focus on doing its own things well” and spur domestic reforms spanning its development pattern, trade model, and macroeconomic policy priorities. Guan expects U.S.-China economic and trade relations to worsen but is confident these domestic adjustments will enable China to weather the “tariff storm.”
Three Chinese state-affiliated researchers Jiang Zhao, Dong Chao, and Fu Jiang assess the impact of Trump 2.0 on the global economy and U.S.-China trade relations. They foresee Trump’s policies as harmful to multilateral economic cooperation, but they believe the impact on China will be limited. They also propose a slate of countermeasures for Beijing, which include further diversifying export markets and trade cooperation with emerging economies, optimizing China’s ability to attract foreign investment, accelerating RMB internationalization, and “telling China’s economic development story well” to influence global public opinion.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a top economist at the Bank of China Securities unpacks the potential trade impacts of a second Trump administration on China. He argues that Trump 2.0 may not be universally unfavorable from Beijing’s perspective, given he is entering his second term more focused on domestic issues and China currently maintains a lower trade deficit with the United States than other countries. Though he suggests Trump 2.0 could be less volatile than Trump 1.0, Guan cautions that Beijing still needs to prepare for U.S.-China trade relations to worsen and views domestic reforms and economic performance improvements as key to strengthening China’s position.
Three Chinese economists from JD.com lay out potential impacts of tariffs that U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to impose on China, arguing that U.S. domestic concerns will most likely reduce the duration and magnitude of such measures, thereby minimizing their impacts on the Chinese economy. They argue that regardless of the scale of Trump’s trade actions, Beijing should seek to bolster its national strength through proactive international trade integration with other countries.
Lou Yu, a scholar from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), traces opportunities and challenges for continued development of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and broader regional engagement in Latin America. Lou is relatively sober on prospects for bilateral ties, pointing to the geopolitical situation in Latin America (specifically, growing U.S. and European interests in the region), substantial crime rates and associated security challenges to Chinese investment, and political instability in many Latin American countries. Nevertheless, Lou suggests that political trends in the region – including a resurgence of left-leaning governments – may result in greater openness to BRI engagement going forward.
One of China’s top demographics and labor scholars analyzes how labor markets will be transformed by the emergence and industrial integration of artificial intelligence (AI). He provides several policy recommendations for Beijing to manage this transition with minimal social disruption. These include improvements to the social welfare system and household registration systems, both of which he sees as necessary to address inevitable disruptions to the human capital landscape.
In this short piece, researchers at the Cross-Strait Institute of Urban Planning at Xiamen University lay out recommendations for Beijing on how to prepare for post-“reunification” governance of Taiwan. The unnamed authors of a now-deleted article recommend Beijing create a “shadow government” that will be ready to take over in Taipei in the case of “reunification,” and prepare policies for education, military, trade, and other issues today so planned “regime change” can be quick and efficient.
Zhang Jie, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, analyzes growing coordination among the United States, Japan, and the Philippines. Zhang frames this trilateral coordination as evidence that Washington is aiming to expand its economic and security influence in the region. In response, Zhang recommends Beijing strengthen diplomatic and economic engagement with its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific, focusing in particular on small and medium-sized states.
Li Min, a researcher at the China Institute of International Studies, provides an overview of Russia’s shifting relations with North and South Korea, pointing to increasingly close ties between Moscow and Pyongyang. Conversely, Li suggests, Russia’s previously strong relations with South Korea have deteriorated since its invasion of Ukraine and Seoul’s support for Kyiv. Despite these trends, in Li’s analysis it is unlikely that Russia will completely abandon its relationship with South Korea, just as its burgeoning trade partnership with North Korea has its limits.
In this January 2024 interview, head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong outlines China’s strategy for “new industrialization.” Jin emphasizes the importance of upgrading advanced manufacturing through integration of cutting-edge technologies, consolidating China’s leadership in emerging strategic sectors in which it has an advantage, and supporting small firms that might be benefited by application of AI and other technologies in their production methods.