Shi and Trump’s dream may not die, not his biggest problem

If you say the name Donald Trump in the halls of wholesale markets and commercial exhibitions in China, you will hear a faded muffled laugh.

The US President and his definitions did not plant 145 % fear in many Chinese merchants.

Instead, they inspired an army of Chinese nationalists via the Internet to create satirical ames in a series of videos and virgin virgins-some of which include President Trump, who was created from artificial intelligence, Vice President JD Vance, and technology singer Elon Musk on shoe collection lines and iPhone.

China does not behave as a country facing the possibility of economic pain, and President Xi Jinping has explained that Beijing will not decline.

“For more than 70 years, China has always relied on self -reliance and hard work for development … has never relied on anyone’s gifts and is not afraid of any unreasonable repression,” he said.

His confidence may come partially because China is less dependent than 10 years ago on exports to the United States. But the truth is that the edge of the abyss and raising the tariff in Trump pushes the pressure points already in the faltering Chinese economy. With the housing crisis, increased functional insecurity and the aging of the population, the Chinese people simply do not spend as much as their government wants.

Xi arrived in power in 2012 with the dream of renewed China. This is now tested severely – not only by the customs tariff. Now, the question is whether Trump’s tariff will prove the economic dreams of X

The population of 1.4 billion, in theory, is a huge local market. But there is a problem. They do not seem ready to spend money while the country’s economic view is unconfirmed.

This has not been paid by the trade war – but with the collapse of the housing market. Many Chinese families have invested their life savings in their homes, just to watch prices decreased in the past five years.

Housing developers continued to build even with the collapse of the real estate market. It is believed that Chinese population will not fill all empty apartments throughout the country.

King, the former Vice -head of the Chinese Statistics Office, admitted two years ago that the “most extreme estimate” is that there are now vacant houses for 3 billion people.

Traveling around Chinese provinces and sees that they are full of empty projects – lines of tall concrete shells that were classified on “ghost cities”. Others were installed, the landscape gardens, the curtains framing windows, and it appears to be full of a new home promise. But only at night, when you don’t see any lights, can you know that the apartments are empty. There is not enough buyers to match this level of construction.

The government acted five years ago to restrict the amount of money that developers can borrow. But the damage to the prices of homes, in turn, the consumer has been confident in China, and analysts expected a 2.5 % decrease in home prices this year, according to a Reuters poll in February.

And not only the prices of homes that are concerned about Chinese families of the middle class.

They are worried about whether the government is You can provide them with a pension Over the next decade, about 300 million people, between the ages of 50 and 60, are scheduled to leave the Chinese workforce. According to 2019 estimates by the Chinese -run Chinese Academy, the government pension fund can be exhausted by 2035.

There are also concerns about whether their sons, daughters and grandchildren are A job can be obtained Millions of university graduates also struggle to find work. More than one in five people between the ages of 16 and 24 in urban areas are unemployment in China, according to official data published in August 2023. The government has not issued youth unemployment numbers since then.

The problem is that China cannot turn the switch and move from selling goods to the United States to selling to local buyers.

“Given the declining pressure on the economy, local spending is unlikely to be dramatically expanded in the short term,” said Professor Ni Hoyaoh at Renmin University.

“It will take time to replace exports with internal demand.”

According to Professor Zhao Mingao, Deputy Director of the American Studies Center at the University of Fodan, “China does not have great expectations for talks with the Trump administration … The real battlefield in amending local policies in China, such as promoting local demand.”

To revive the slow economy, the government has announced billions of children’s care subsidies, increased wages and better paid vacations. It has also provided a 41 billion dollar program that provides discounts on elements such as consumer electronics and electric cars (EVS) to encourage more people to spend. But Professor Zhang John, Dean of Economy at the University of Vodan, believes this is not “sustainable”.

“We need a long -term mechanism,” he says. “We need to start increasing the income of the available population.”

This is an urgent matter for xi. The dream of prosperity that he sold when he took power 13 years ago was not true.

She also realizes that China has a smaller, frustrating generation, anxious about their future. This may be a greater problem for the Communist Party: protests or disturbances.

A report issued by the observation of China’s opposition to Freedom House that the protests driven by financial grievances have witnessed a highly declining increase in the past few months.

All protests are rapidly defeated and monitored on social media, so they are unlikely to pose a real threat to Xi at the present time.

Xi said in 2012: “Only when the country works well, the nation can work well,” Xi said in 2012.

This promise was made when China’s economic rise seemed to be stopped. It now seems uncertain.

Where the country has made great steps over the past decade, there are in areas such as consumer electronics, batteries, EVS and artificial intelligence as part of the advanced manufacturing axis.

It has succeeded in the US technology dominance with Chatbot Deepseek and BYD, which overcame Tesla last year to become the largest EV maker in the world.

However, Trump’s tariff threatens to throw a key to business.

The restrictions imposed on selling the main chips to China, including the newest steps of exports from the American chips giant, for example, aim to reduce Xi’s ambitions in technology.

Nevertheless, Shi knows that Chinese manufacturers have a long feature for decades, so that American manufacturers are struggling to find the same range of infrastructure and skilled workers elsewhere.

President Xi is also trying to use this crisis as an incentive for further change and finding more new markets for China.

“In the short term, some Chinese exporters will be greatly affected,” says Professor Zhang. “But Chinese companies will take an initiative to control the export destination to overcome difficulties. Sources are waiting and looking for new customers.”

Donald Trump was the first in his position, the Chinese braid to search elsewhere for buyers. It has expanded its relations throughout Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa-and the initiative of structure and structure of the belt and roads with the so-called global south.

China earns rewards for this diversification. More than 145 countries trade with China are more than they do with the United States, according to the Lowe Institute.

In 2001, only 30 countries chose Beijing as a major commercial partner on Washington.

Since Trump targets both the friend and the enemy, some believe that Xi can increase the current global system led by the United States and photograph his country as a stable and alternative global partner and commercial leader.

The Chinese leader southeastern Asia chose for his first trip abroad after announcing the customs tariff, sensing that his neighbors would become increasingly over Trump’s tariff.

About a quarter of Chinese exports is now manufactured or shipped across a second country, including Vietnam and Cambodia.

Recent US measures may provide an opportunity for XI to form China’s role positively in the world.

Professor Zhang says: “Trump’s forced tariff policy is an opportunity for Chinese diplomacy,” says Professor Zhang.

China will have to walk carefully. Some countries will be tense that the products that are manufactured for the United States may end with the floods to their markets.

The Trump tariff in 2016 sent an abundance of cheap Chinese imports, originally allocated to the United States, to Southeast Asia, Harming many local manufacturers.

According to Professor Hohoa, “about 20 % of China’s exports go to the United States – if these exports flood any market or regional country, this may lead to the throwing of evil competition, which leads to a new commercial friction.”

There are obstacles to XI that offer himself as a referee of free trade in the world.

China has undergone other countries to trade restrictions in recent years.

In 2020, after the Australian government called for a global investigation into assets and early dealing with the Covid’s pandemic, which Beijing argued was a political maneuver against them, China put a tariff on Australian wine and barley and imposed biological security measures on some beef, wood, charcoal, cotton and cotton. Some Australian exports of some goods fell to China to nearly zero.

Australian Defense Secretary Richard Marles said earlier this month that his nation would not “keep the hand of China” as Washington escalated its trade war with Beijing.

The preceding measures of China may hinder the current global awareness of XI, and many countries may be unwilling to choose between Beijing and Washington.

Even with all the different difficulties, Shi is betting that Beijing will be able to withstand any economic pain longer than Washington In this great strong competition.

Trump appears to have fell first, last week, hinting to possible definitions on the definitions, saying that the taxes he imposed so far on Chinese imports “will decrease significantly, but it will not be zero.”

Meanwhile, Chinese social media has returned to work.

“Trump may be analyzed,” was one of the best research topics on the Chinese social media platform after the US President reduced his approach to customs tariffs.

Even if the conversations occur or when China has a longer game.

The last trade war forced her to diversify the export market away from the United States towards other markets – especially in the global south.

This trade war may search China in the mirror to see its own faults – and whether it can fix it will be at the level of the policies made in Beijing, not Washington.

The highest credit photo: Getty Emus

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