GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
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#1 XI JINPING – POLICIES ARE SHAPED BY HARDSHIP. SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
#2 TRUMP AIMS AT CHINA BUT INJURES JAPAN AND SOUTH KOREA.
NIKKEI ASIA – WILLIAM PESEK
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#1 XI JINPING – POLICIES ARE SHAPED BY HARDSHIP. SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
“To understand China’s approach to the trade and tech war with the US, you have to understand the psychology of the man leading it. And that means grappling not just with ideology or grand strategy, but with humiliation. Xi Jinping is not just fighting a trade war. He’s fighting a memory.
Xi was born into red royalty. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a top party leader. But that protection vanished overnight when he was purged in the early 1960s. The teenage Xi was cast out of elite schools and branded a political liability. “Back then, our classmates all looked down on us and avoided us, as if we didn’t exist,” said a fellow student who was ostracised. That dislocation cut deep. It instilled in Xi not just a distrust of political tides, but a hardened belief in self-preservation through discipline, control and loyalty to the system that had once abandoned him.
This is the emotional architecture behind Xi’s governing instincts — and it directly shapes how he interprets foreign pressure. US policymakers may see tariffs and chip restrictions as policy tools to advance US interests. But for Xi, they echo something more raw: the experience of being diminished, delegitimised, cast aside. Humiliation, once personal, has become national.
The trade wars are a thinly veiled attempt to shame and contain China, to deny it technological adulthood. The appropriate response, in Xi’s mind, may not be a negotiated settlement but a long war of resistance. In fact, hardship isn’t merely to be endured; it’s something to be conquered.”
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
All leaders have personal histories that leave their mark. The SCMP article notes that “Xi was sent to a rural village during the Cultural Revolution. He initially fled, but later returned and remade himself there. He lived in a cave. He shovelled sewage. He read Marx and repeatedly applied to join the party, until it finally accepted him.” Xi’s experience is now baked into China’s long-term strategy. He is positioning China for a long drawn-out, grinding contest by building domestic capacity, hardening supply chains and rooting out perceived vulnerabilities to foreign pressure. Two examples make the point;-
First, Huawei’s Ascend A1 chips were built secretively in the shadow of US sanctions with state-directed support. These chips, particularly the 910D, are now beginning to rival Nvidia’s H100 in performance.
Second is rare earths where China by tightening export controls on strategically critical metals like dysprosium and terbium. Xi is reminding Washington that, in a long contest, dependency is leverage — and Beijing has plenty of it.
Pressure won’t bring Xi to the table. He’s not bargaining — he’s resisting. He believes he has history on his side. And the more the U.S. tries to force a break, the more it confirms his suspicion that strength, not compromise, is the endgame. Xi’s policies today are due in part to his persistent study of Marxism and Chinese history. They are also shaped by the hardship that characterised his hard life during the Cultural Revolution.
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#2 TRUMP AIMS AT CHINA BUT INJURES JAPAN AND SOUTH KOREA
NIKKEI ASIA – WILLIAM PESEK
William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of “Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan’s Lost Decades.”
“During the Trump 1.0 years from 2017 to 2021, the U.S. president’s tariffs targeted Xi Jinping’s China, but traditional U.S. allies such as Japan and South Korea found themselves at the center of collateral damage. Now under Trump 2.0, deja vu is striking all over again.
While China’s economy grew 5.45% year-on-year in the first quarter, Japan’s contracted 0.7% and South Korea’s shrank 0.2% quarter-on-quarter. Technically, this period predates the worst of Trump’s tariffs. Yet it is fair to think the policy signals and chaos emanating from his White House chilled confidence across Asia in March.
Japan and South Korea will endure more direct hits in the current quarter. The coming “Trumpcession” could hardly arrive at a worse moment for Asia’s No. 2 and No. 4 economies.”
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
Japan and South Korea are hurting. Trump’s tariffs are doing damage. Is this the time for the two countries to de-risk and de-couple from China? Isn’t the opposite more likely?
This week Nikkei Asai reported that the Japanese and Chinese governments have reached an agreement on procedures to resume imports of fishery products from Japan, bringing China closer to ending a ban imposed in 2023 over the release of treated wastewater from the disaster-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. China fully suspended imports in 2023 after Japan began releasing the water into the sea. The issue has since been a factor in worsening bilateral relations. Nikkei Asia further report that China is expected to announce soon that it will resume seafood imports from other Japanese prefectures.
Japan and South Korea can crawl their way into the Oval Office with a begging bowl and experience ritual humiliation in front of the world’s media or they can follow China’s example and stand firm. It is not easy to face down Trump. He is a master at the set-piece confrontations but there is another way as China’s reaction in Geneva showed. But there is more than just standing firm.
China is providing increasing evidence of its ability to engage in long term trade relationships. It is emerging as a reliable partner. Looking ahead there will be fewer references to de-risking and de-coupling and more evidence of stable business relationships. More evidence of a change in the balance of power – the U.S. in decline and China on the rise.
GRAHAM PERRY
