China Declares a “People’s War” Against US Tariffs

The Chinese government must be feeling some economic pain if they are now resorting to pushing nationalism to defend themselves:

Among China’s most surprising responses to the trade war has been its reluctance to use its vast state media empire to rally the home front. That’s changed since U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tariff barrage.


In recent days, the once-banned phrase “trade war” has roared back into widespread use in Chinese media. Meanwhile, official news outlets gave high-profile play to commentaries urging unified resistance to foreign pressure, including an editorial from the nationalist Global Times calling the trade dispute a “people’s war” and threat to all of China.

Such sentiments have found an eager audience, with a state television video vowing a “fight to the end” attracting more than 3 billion views since Monday. The clip was the most-read piece on China’s Twitter-like social media platform Weibo earlier Tuesday.

The rhetorical shift underscores the risks that China’s Communist Party veers toward a more nationalistic position as the trade war drags on and weighs on economic growth. Chinese President Xi Jinping, like Trump, has promised to rejuvenate his country and can’t afford to look weak in the face of foreign power.
So far, China’s state media have sought to tamp down the kind of patriotic passions that fueled a backlash against Japanese interests when a territorial dispute flared in 2012. Even now, state media commentaries focused the blame on the U.S. government, rather than the country as a whole.
For instance, a commentary published in the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper, avoids any mention of Trump’s name and refers only to “certain people in America who brood over the so-called massive trade deficit,” said David Bandurski of the China Media Project, an independent research program affiliated with the University of Hong Kong.

Bloomberg

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