中國已做好迎接貿易戰的準備，美國仍有許多需要學習的地方（1/2）

Recently Yahoo News on-line picked up the following:

China Came Ready for This Trade Fight, and the US Has a Lot to Learn (1/2)

Bloomberg - Tom Orlik, Eric Zhu and Jennifer Welch

Wed, August 13, 2025 at 3:00 a.m. PDT 8 min read

(Bloomberg Markets) -- Under President Donald Trump, the US has launched a multipronged attack on China’s economy. Since Chairman Mao Zedong’s reign, China has seen it coming. A US system built around the ideal of openness and interdependence is facing off against a Chinese counterpart constructed as a fortress of control. Both sides have powerful resources. Only one has been preparing for the fight for decades.

Since the beginning of Trump’s first term in 2017, the US stance on China has swung from constructive if increasingly cautious engagement to something between fierce rivalry and outright hostility. China’s exports to the US face duties running close to 40%. Supply of bleeding-edge semiconductors for China’s technology companies has been curtailed. The country’s science, technology, engineering and math students, once welcomed into US university labs, are checked at the border. The social media app TikTok, owned by Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd., is on a stay of execution in the US market.

The assumption in Washington is that China must now be floundering. Isn’t it hooked on US customers and technologies? It’s only a matter of time, surely, before President Xi Jinping picks up his red phone to call the White House and concede defeat.

The reality is rather different. It’s certainly true that Trump’s policy pivot is a problem for Beijing. Bloomberg Economics calculations show tariffs at the current levels would erase more than 50% of sales to the US. But it’s far from the end of China’s development story.

China’s exports to the US equal about 3% of gross domestic product—down from a peak of 7% two decades ago, after a campaign to diversify away from American consumers that’s been every bit as deliberate as US efforts to reduce reliance on Chinese supply chains. That means even if half of China’s exports to the US get wiped out, the blow to the overall economy is just 1.5%. Not good news, to be sure, but far from a disaster.

With the US starting a trade war against not just China but everyone else as well, its losses may well be around the same size. Model-based estimates from Bloomberg Economics flag a hit of about 1.6% of GDP as import prices rise and supply chains snarl.

The algorithmic outperformance of DeepSeek (China’s answer to ChatGPT) shows its coders are smart enough to work around the US embargo on semiconductor supplies. Control of rare earth elements critical for manufacturing and defense industries has given China an export-controls weapon of its own—one it’s used in this year’s negotiations in Geneva and London to extract concessions from the US.

The upshot: Even after almost a decade of US efforts to contain its manufacturing might, China’s share of global exports remains elevated.

Why is China proving so resilient? Because for more than a century, from the last gasp of the Qing dynasty, through a short-lived Republic, to the chaos of Maoism and the progress of the reform era, there’s been one outstanding constant: preparation for the struggle now playing out.

It started in the late 19th and early 20th century, when, after humiliation from foreign invaders, China’s thinkers started to aim at “self-strengthening” through modernization. Born in 1854, and graduating from the British naval academy, intellectual and educator Yan Fu translated into Chinese the works of Western scholars such as English biologist Thomas Huxley and Scottish economist Adam Smith. From Huxley he introduced the idea of “survival of the fittest,” making the case that nations, like species in the natural world, must continually build themselves up to avoid falling prey to more powerful rivals.

In the 1930s struggle between Mao’s Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, Mao’s promise of effective resistance against the Japanese invaders, as much as the dream of a more egalitarian society, was the center of his appeal. In power from 1949, he instituted a forced-march approach to industrialization that ended in the graveyard for many Chinese. The path was winding, but the aim was unwavering: Stave off foreign threats. “The American imperialists have always wanted to destroy us,” he warned.

In the reform era that began soon after Mao’s death in 1976, the self-strengthening objective remained the same, but the policies to deliver it were vastly improved. In the 1980s and ’90s, He Xin—a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences scholar whose work ­circulated among top leaders—warned that as China rose, “developed countries feeling threatened by the increase in ­competition will seek to hold China down.” He had a plan to respond: “With the constant threat of being destroyed, building a fully self-reliant industrial system should naturally be the most realistic option for China.”

(to be continued)

Translation

中國已做好迎接貿易戰的準備，美國仍有許多需要學習的地方（1/2）

（彭博市場）—在特朗普總統的領導下，美國對中國經濟發動了多管齊下的攻擊。自毛澤東主席執政以來，中國就已預見此一趨勢。以開放和相互依存為理念建構的美國體系，正與以控制堡壘為核心建構的中國體系對峙。雙方都擁有強大的資源。只有一方為這場鬥爭準備了數十年。

自2017年特朗普第一任期開始以來，美國對華立場已從建設性但日益謹慎的接觸，轉變為介於激烈競爭和徹底敵對之間的一種狀態。中國對美出口面臨近40%的關稅。中國科技公司尖端半導體的供應已受到限制。曾經受美國大學實驗室歡迎的中國科學、技術、工程和數學專業的學生，如今卻在邊境受到檢查。其中國母公司字節跳動旗下的社群媒體應用程式TikTok 在美國的市場被暫停營運。

華盛頓的假設是，中國現在肯定陷入困境。難道它不依賴美國客戶和科技嗎？ 習近平主席會拿起他的紅色電話致電白宮承認失敗肯定只是時間上的問題。

現實情況並非如此。特朗普的政策轉向確實對北京構成了問題。彭博經濟研究的計算顯示，以目前的水平徵收關稅將使中國對美銷售額減少50%以上。但這遠非中國發展過程的終點。

中國對美出口約佔國內生產毛額（GDP）的3%，低於20年前7%的最高峰。此前，中國積極推動經濟多元化，減少對美國消費者的依賴，這與美國減少對中國供應鏈的依賴的努力同樣深思熟慮。這意味著，即使中國對美出口減少一半，對整體經濟的打擊僅1.5%。這當然不是好消息，但遠非災難。

隨著美國不僅對中國發動貿易戰，也對其他國家發動貿易戰，其損失很可能與美國本身大致相同。彭博經濟研究基於模型的估計顯示，由於進口價格上漲和供應鏈混亂，GDP將受到約1.6%的衝擊。

DeepSeek（中國版ChatGPT）演算法的優異表現表明，其程式設計師足夠聰明，能夠繞過美國的半導體供應禁運。中國對製造業和國防工業至關重要的稀土元素的控制，讓它擁有了出口管制的武器 - 在今年日內瓦和倫敦的談判中，中國也利用了這項武器迫使美國讓步。

結果：即使美國近十年來一直試圖遏制中國製造業實力，中國在全球出口中的份額仍然保持在高位。

中國為何如此堅韌？因為一個多世紀以來，從清朝的末期，到曇花一現的民國，再到毛澤東時代的混亂和改革開放的進步，中國始終堅持一個突出的原則：為現今的鬥爭做好準備。

這始於19世紀末20世紀初，當時飽受外敵侵略之辱的中國思想家開始致力於透過現代化去實現「自強」。嚴復 (Yan Fu)出生於1854年，畢業於英國海軍學院，是一位知識分子和教育家，他將英國生物學家 Thomas Huxley 和蘇格蘭經濟學家亞 Adam Smith 當等西方學者的著作翻譯成中文。他從Huxley的著作中引入了「適者生存」的概念，認為國家如同自然界中的物種一樣，必須不斷自我發展，才能避免被更強大的對手吞噬。

在1930年代毛澤東領導的共產黨與蔣介石領導的國民黨之間的鬥爭中，毛澤東的核心號召力是承諾有效抵抗日本侵略者的，以及建立一個更加平等社會的夢想。 1949年上台後，他推行了強行推進工業化的路線，但最終卻讓許多中國人走向了墳墓。這條路雖然曲折，但目標堅定不移：抵禦外來威脅。他警告說： “美帝國主義者一直想毀滅我們。”

1976年毛澤東去世後不久中國開啟的改革開放時期，自強不息的目標依然如故，但去實現這一目標的政策卻得到了極大的改進。在1980年代和1990年代，中國社會科學院學者何新 (He Xin) （其著作曾在高層領導人中流傳）曾警告稱，隨著中國的崛起，「已開發國家感受到競爭加劇帶來的威脅，將試圖壓制中國」。他制定了應對計劃：「面對持續存在的被摧毀的威脅，建立一個完全自給自足的工業體係自然應該是中國最實際的選擇。」

（待續）

Note:

1. Yan Fu (嚴復)（1854–1921）, born in 1854 in Fuzhou of China, began his scholarly journey at a young age. His early education was rooted in traditional Chinese learning, starting at a private school around age seven, then under the tutelage of esteemed scholars from age eleven, laying a strong foundation in the Confucian classics. After his father’s death in 1866 that plunged the family into hardship, Yan Fu entered the Foochow Arsenal Academy in 1867, where he studied English, mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, navigation, and other practical subjects. He graduated with top honors in 1871 and then served aboard naval vessels for five years. In 1877, Yan Fu was sent to Europe to further his studies. He first studied in Portsmouth in Britain before earning admission to the Royal Naval College at Greenwich in London. There, he excelled in advanced mathematics, chemistry, physics, naval tactics, maritime law, and artillery fortifications. During his time in Britain, he immersed himself beyond his assigned courses by frequently visiting libraries, attending court sessions, and exploring Western political, economic, and social philosophies, fueling his lifelong quest to understand the sources of Western strength. (ChatGPT)