When China said on April 11 that it would match US President Donald Trump’s tariffs of 125 per cent from April 12, its message was loud and clear: Bring it on.
“China never bluffs – and we see through those who do,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning wrote on X on April 11, hours before the announcement.
Mr Trump might have hoped that by focusing his reciprocal tariff wrath on China and hiking it up to 125 per cent – later clarified by the White House that it was 145 per cent – while sparing all other countries, he can make the Chinese quaver, crumble and call for a deal.
That was never going to happen. Beijing has decided from the start that it will not come to the negotiating table under duress. Any talks can take place only on an “equal footing”, government spokespersons repeatedly said.
It’s not simply a matter of “face” or pride.
Rather, it is the Chinese taking a leaf from the playbook of Mao Zedong, the founding leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), on how he faced off the Americans during the Korean War of 1950-1953.
In 1950, Mao famously said: “A well-thrown first punch can prevent 10,000 punches later.” He believed that in the face of provocation, an early show of strength can establish credibility, set boundaries and deter future aggression.
This thinking underpinned his bold decision to enter the Korean War on the side of North Korea, even though the PRC had been founded only less than a year earlier in October 1949 and was still reeling from the devastation of the Japanese occupation and a bitter civil war.
According to the official Chinese narrative, despite being poorly equipped and outnumbered, China succeeded in repelling the “imperialist” United States, then a rising superpower, fighting on the side of South Korea.
The war gave rise to a slew of movies and songs that immortalised Chinese heroes of the war in tales of sacrifice for the nation and of triumph against the odds. The victory was held up as validation of Mao’s strategic thinking and his enduring doctrine of douzheng (struggle or fight).
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao posted on X on April 10 a black-and-white video of Mao in February 1953, almost three years into the Korean War, saying: “We will fight however long the Americans want to fight. We will fight until we achieve complete victory.”
Along with the video, Ms Mao, who is not related to the late leader, wrote: “We are Chinese. We are not afraid of provocations. We don’t back down.”
In reality, the war ended in July that year in a bloody stalemate with no clear winners.
It nevertheless gave credence to a logic popular among nationalistic commentators: If China could push back against the US even when it was so weak in the 1950s, why should China, which is the world’s second-largest economy now, shy away from the fight?
Mao famously called the US a “paper tiger” during the Korean War and the Vietnam War, from 1955 to 1975, in reference to his assessment that the US military was not invincible and that it would not dare to act upon its threats of using nuclear weapons.
During both wars, the US tried to contain China – which not only fought on the side of North Korea but also supported North Vietnam – by imposing economic sanctions and a trade embargo, a situation that seems to echo that of today, with the US fighting both a trade and tech war with the Chinese.
Ms Mao posted on April 11 a Mao quote overlaid on his photo: “The US intimidates certain countries, stopping them from doing business with us. But America is just a paper tiger. Don’t believe its bluff. One poke, and it’ll burst.”
The US under Mr Trump is probably a tiger that not many countries in the world would want to poke. Nevertheless, Mao’s thinking about the Korean War and other struggles is deeply ingrained in the psyche of generations of Chinese people. It provides the state with a convenient narrative to mentally prepare its people to endure a painful, drawn-out trade war, and to have moral courage even when the odds seem to be against them.
Not everyone buys into the argument. In response to a post on RedNote drawing parallels between Mao’s approach about the Korean War and China’s stance in today’s trade war, one user, “Gugu”, commented: “I’ve been jobless for half a year. If we keep fighting, I’ll have to retire at age 30.”
When relations were better, invoking the Korean War was considered impolite.
In 2011, Chinese pianist Lang Lang stirred controversy at the White House by performing My Motherland, the theme song for a Korean War-era film, which had anti-American lyrics like: “If the jackals and wolves come, I’ll be ready to greet them with my shotgun.”
The re-emergence of these Korean War ghosts now bodes ill for Sino-US relations.
- Yew Lun Tian is a senior foreign correspondent who covers China for The Straits Times.
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