China will never back down. Periodt. Even if it takes until the end of time, it’s gonna call Trump’s tariff bluff. Said one Foreign Ministry spokesman, “a tariff-wielding barbarian who attempts to force countries to call and beg for mercy can never expect that call from China.”
Or, according to the May 7, 2025 edition of the Chinese Communist Party outlet Global Times, “China decides to agree to engage with US for talk”:
“With full consideration of the expectations across the world, the interests of the Chinese side, and the call from US business community and consumers, the Chinese side decides to agree to engage with the US side, a spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said on Wednesday. The spokesperson said that recently, US senior officials frequently released signals to adjust tariffs and actively sent information to the Chinese side through multiple channels, expressing intention to start talk on tariff-related issues with China. China has conducted careful evaluation of these communications….
“China’s position is consistent. Whether it is confrontation or negotiation, China’s resolve to safeguard its development interests will never waver, neither will its stance and objectives in upholding international fairness and justice and the global economic and trade order. We will fight if we must. Our doors are open, if the US wants to talk. Dialogue and negotiation must be based on equality, respect and mutual benefit, the spokesperson continued.”
And so on.
We all know, I hope, that China, as demonstrated by its Hydra-pronged domestic and international assaults on everybody (see the news), is not really a bosom buddy of “international fairness and justice.”
And what do “equality,” “respect,” and “mutual benefit” mean in the context of negotiations one of the parties to which is a totalitarian dictatorship that does not believe in rights and does not respect anybody not part of its gang?
Trade does imply mutual benefit. But there’s a difference between honest and productively gained benefit and coercively gained benefit, and it seems unlikely, no matter what the outcome of the negotiations, that China’s intellectual property theft, slave labor, and other abuses woven into its trading practices will come to an immediate and permanent halt as a result of any negotiations.
Global Times drones on. The U.S. must also “face squarely the severe negative impacts of its unilateral tariffs on itself and the world…correct its erroneous practices, and meet halfway with China….”
Also, be it known far and wide that China will never “compromise its principles and stance or sacrifice international fairness and justice to reach any agreement.”
The negotiations are already exhausting and going nowhere, and they haven’t even started.
Also see:
Reuters: “US, China to hold ice-breaker trade talks in Geneva on Saturday”
“U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and chief trade negotiator Jamieson Greer will meet China’s economic tsar He Lifeng in Switzerland this weekend for talks that could be the first step toward resolving a trade war disrupting the global economy.
“News of the planned Geneva meeting, first announced by Washington late Tuesday, sent U.S. equity index futures higher. Stock markets in China and Hong Kong followed suit during Asian trading on Wednesday.”
