Xi Is Ratcheting Up China’s Pain Threshold

“As President Trump tries to play hardball in his trade war with Xi Jinping, he faces an adversary who has armed China to play a long and potentially painful game in its contest with the U.S,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“In the weeks since the U.S. president first slapped sky-high tariffs on China, Beijing has responded with defiance. A spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry posted on X footage from 1953 of Mao Zedong promising to fight to the end against U.S.-led forces in the Korean War. ‘We are Chinese,’ she wrote. ‘We don’t back down.’”

“The Mao post and other messages from Beijing highlight what China sees as one of its core advantages against the U.S.: While Trump and his Republican backers are vulnerable to the whims of American voters, the party that Mao built is deeply entrenched, having maintained power through more than seven decades despite war, famine, political upheaval and financial crises.”