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The author is a fellow on the Asia Society Coverage Institute’s Middle for China Evaluation
To grasp China’s strategy to the commerce and tech battle with the US, it’s important to perceive the psychology of the person main it. And meaning grappling not simply with ideology or grand technique, however with humiliation. Because it seems, Xi Jinping isn’t just preventing a commerce battle. He’s preventing a reminiscence.
When a refrain of Chinese language mouthpieces cited Mao Zedong’s On Protracted Struggle to border the newest chapter within the US-China stand-off, it wasn’t only a throwback to revolutionary lore. It was a message to home audiences that this wasn’t a brief commerce scuffle, however a check of nationwide resolve.
Mao argued in 1938 that China, militarily weaker and fragmented, couldn’t win via direct confrontation. Nevertheless it might endure. Victory would come via endurance and perseverance, by dragging the enemy right into a battle of attrition — via retreat, stalemate, and eventually, counterattack. At present, it’s not Japanese troops however American tariffs and tech sanctions that China is confronting. The battlefield has shifted, however the logic is hauntingly acquainted.
State media shops’ revival of Mao’s wartime essays — written within the caves of Yan’an as Japanese forces superior — additionally says one thing deeper about Xi himself.
Xi was born into purple royalty. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a high celebration chief. However that safety vanished in a single day when he was purged within the early Nineteen Sixties. The teenage Xi was solid out of elite colleges and branded a political legal responsibility. “Again then, our classmates all seemed down on us and averted us, as if we didn’t exist,” said a fellow pupil who was ostracised.
That dislocation reduce deep. It instilled in him not only a mistrust of political tides, however a hardened perception in self-preservation via self-discipline, management and loyalty to the system that had as soon as deserted him.
That is the emotional structure behind Xi’s governing instincts — and it straight shapes how he interprets overseas stress. US policymakers might even see tariffs and chip restrictions as coverage instruments to advance US pursuits. However for Xi, they echo one thing extra uncooked: the expertise of being diminished, delegitimised, solid apart. Humiliation, as soon as private, has develop into nationwide. The commerce wars are a thinly veiled try and disgrace and comprise China, to disclaim it technological maturity. The suitable response, in Xi’s thoughts, will not be a negotiated settlement however an extended battle of resistance.
Actually, hardship isn’t merely to be endured; it’s one thing to be conquered. Xi was despatched to a rural village through the Cultural Revolution. He initially fled, however later returned and remade himself there. He lived in a cave. He shovelled sewage. He learn Marx and repeatedly utilized to affix the celebration, till it lastly accepted him. It was a crucible. “Knives are sharpened on the stone,” he has mentioned.
That outlook is now baked into China’s long-term technique. Xi just isn’t seeking to “win” the commerce battle in a traditional sense. He’s positioning China for a drawn-out, grinding contest by constructing home capability, hardening provide chains and rooting out perceived vulnerabilities to overseas stress. Huawei’s improvement of its Ascend AI chips — constructed secretively within the shadow of US sanctions with state-directed assist — is a working example.
These chips, significantly the 910D, are starting to rival Nvidia’s H100 in efficiency. The identical logic applies to uncommon earths — one other area the place China, as a substitute of chasing symmetry, weaponises asymmetry. By tightening export controls on strategically essential metals like dysprosium and terbium, China is reminding Washington that, in an extended contest, dependency is leverage — and Beijing has loads of it.
However there’s a flip facet. As soon as battle is elevated into an ethical narrative, flexibility begins to appear like capitulation. And that rigidity is exhibiting up at residence. Regardless of guarantees to pivot in direction of home consumption and rebalance the expansion mannequin, progress is halting. Native officers and bureaucrats are risk-averse. The anti-corruption marketing campaign, whereas politically efficient, has paralysed many mid-level choice makers. The celebration is disciplined, however it’s additionally brittle.
In making an attempt to inoculate the CCP towards vulnerability, Xi could also be undermining the very adaptability the economic system now wants. The “protracted battle” mindset is traditionally resonant and politically helpful. Nevertheless it additionally creates strategic blind spots — particularly in an interconnected, fast-moving world economic system. Generally resilience requires adaptation, not simply endurance.
For US policymakers, which means that stress alone received’t carry Xi to the desk. He’s not bargaining — he’s resisting. He believes he has historical past on his facet. And the extra the US tries to drive a break, the extra it confirms his suspicion that humiliation, not compromise, is the endgame.
