China has vowed to “fight till the end” after US President Donald Trump escalated his trade war by doubling tariffs on all Chinese imports to 20%.
Beijing hit back at Trump’s levies by imposing retaliatory tariffs of up to 15% on selected American goods, expanding export controls to a dozen US firms and filing a lawsuit at the World Trade Organization. It also sent a stern warning to the Trump administration: Chinese people will never bow to “hegemony or bullying.”
“Pressure, coercion and threats are not the right ways to engage with China. Trying to exert maximum pressure on China is a miscalculation and a mistake,” Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, told a regular news briefing Tuesday afternoon. “If the US insists on waging a tariff war, trade war, or any other kind of war, China will fight till the end.”
The barrage of retaliatory measures and fiery exchanges came as Chinese leader Xi Jinping is preparing to hold a major political gathering designed to project confidence in his country’s ability to stay the course and weather external headwinds.
As thousands of delegates convene in the Chinese capital for the country’s “two sessions” annual meeting, Xi and his officials are set to use the highly choreographed spectacle to broadcast China as a major power steadily advancing its tech prowess and global rise.
That escalating rivalry between the two powers will be in the spotlight on Wednesday morning in Beijing, when Trump’s first address to Congress will roughly coincide with a state-of-the-union-like speech delivered by China’s No. 2 official Li Qiang at the opening meeting of the National’s People Congress (NPC), which rubber-stamps decisions already made behind closed doors.
There, Li is expected to announce China’s yearly targets for economic growth and military spending — and lay out how Beijing plans to continue its economic growth and transformation into a technological powerhouse in the face of mounting pressure from the United States.
Despite the challenges, analysts aren’t bracing for any major policy surprises or U-turns from the roughly weeklong meetings of both the NPC and the country’s top advisory body. True decision-making power lies with the Chinese Communist Party, whose authority cannot be challenged in the country – and Xi, the party’s most powerful leader in decades.
The increased tariffs — and the threat of more economic and tech controls to come — are casting a long shadow over China’s two sessions, which observers will also be watching for signs on how Beijing will continue to address its rumbling economic difficulties at home.
And signs point to Beijing staying the course on its leader’s strategies to bolster innovation, industry and self-sufficiency to steel itself against frictions ahead: all while projecting that, in China, it’s business as usual.
We must “face difficulties head-on and strengthen confidence” amid growing external challenges, the Communist Party journal Qiushi quoted Xi as saying in an article released Friday that’s meant to set the tone for the gathering.
High-tech prowess
China is entering this year’s two sessions buoyed by a surge of confidence and national pride in its tech sector.
Earlier this year, privately owned Chinese AI firm DeepSeek stunned Silicon Valley with the breakout success of its latest open-source large language model. Adding to that milestone: Beijing’s long-term plans for achieving global dominance in green technologies have borne fruit, with its top electric vehicle maker rivaling Elon Musk’s Tesla………
SOURCE: CNN
