To win the trade war, the
CCP just needs one thing.
Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
The US-China trade war has been going on for
three weeks now, and you know what that means.
It’s time to panic!
If you go on X, you’ll see posts with millions
of views claiming that US ports are empty.
That there are zero cargo ships.
That you should panic buy rice and toilet paper.
Yes! Finally! My time has come! I’ve
been hoarding toilet paper since 2020.
It’s made living in New York
City slightly challenging.
But it’s all worth it now.
Time to sell it all for profit!
Wait, what’s that, Shelley?
None of that is true?
Ports are not empty, and there are
definitely cargo ships heading to the US.
And people should not panic buy
rice, which is grown in America,
or toilet paper, which is made in America.
Fine, fine.
I guess if you start seeing toilet paper
shortages, that’s not because of the trade war,
that’s because people got freaked
out by stupid social media posts.
The vast majority of food
shouldn’t be affected, either.
If you panic buy anything,
it should probably be things
like back-to-school supplies
and Christmas decorations.
I’m not saying there won’t be shortages of
made in China stuff. There probably will be,
but we won’t see that in stores
for weeks, or even months down
the line. Chinese products will also get more
expensive. But we don’t know how expensive.
There’s a lot of uncertainty right
now, and a lot of fearmongering.
Which is great for the Chinese
Communist Party. Because they need
the Trump administration to back down on tariffs.
And if the CCP can convince Americans they
should hate the tariffs, they might have a shot.
I’ll tell you why the CCP wants this so badly
in a minute. But first, you know YouTube has
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Ok, so the CCP wants the US to lower their
tariffs. Because if the tariffs continue
at this level, China is going to
be much worse off than the US.
Yes, US consumers will feel some pain. But
like I explained in a previous episode,
China now more than ever depends on exports to
keep its economy going and people employed.
That’s because the Chinese real estate market
has already collapsed. And that’s the other
major driver of the Chinese economy. So they
NEED to export stuff. That’s all they have.
Now, Goldman Sachs estimates that US tariffs
could endanger 16 million export jobs in China.
And that’s probably on the low end.
In a trade war, the country
that’s the bigger exporter
will generally be hit harder. And that’s China.
Chinese workers are in even more trouble because
China’s been fighting deflation for years.
China’s economy is in a deflationary spiral.
That’s when prices fall, which means
companies can’t afford to pay people as much,
so wages fall. And that means
people don’t want to buy stuff,
so consumer demand falls, which means prices
fall even further. And it keeps on going.
China’s been fighting deflation ever since
their disastrous Zero Covid policy. Turns
out it's hard for businesses to survive when
everyone is locked inside their apartments.
The real estate crisis also made deflation worse,
because people’s savings were wiped out.
And a bunch of people lost their jobs, too.
The New York Times talked to a guy who
was a construction worker and a plumber.
“When times were good, Mr. Wang said,
he could make as much as $13,600 a year.
Now he’s lucky if he can make half that.”
Think about that for a second. Even during
the good times, his income was several
thousand dollars below the poverty line in the
US. Now he’s not even making half of that.
So China’s economy is on shaky ground.
And tariffs are making things worse,
by endangering more Chinese jobs.
But the Chinese Communist Party is digging in.
And they’re really good at narrative warfare.
I’ve shown you why China is going to be hit
harder by tariffs than the US. So the trick is,
the CCP needs to make Americans THINK they’re
the ones who will be hit harder instead.
And to do that, the CCP is relying on the
perception that Chinese people can
eat bitterness, but Americans can’t.
Eating bitterness is the Chinese term for
enduring hardships. Basically, suffering.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly told
the Chinese people that they need to eat
bitterness for the good of the nation.
I talked in a previous episode
about how young Chinese people
don’t seem quite as willing to eat
bitterness as previous generations.
But in narrative warfare, that doesn’t matter,
as long as Americans THINK Chinese
people are willing to suffer more.
Which is why China’s Foreign Ministry is
releasing propaganda videos like this.
“History has proven compromise won’t earn you
mercy. Kneeling only invites more
bullying. China won’t kneel down.”)
The rest of the video calls America
an arrogant imperialist, and shows
China leading the world in solidarity
against America over some heroic music.
The message is clearly that America is the bad guy
and it better give up, because China never will.
That same message is being repeated
in the CCP’s domestic propaganda.
Earlier this week, Beijing Daily
published an article called “Today,
it is necessary to revisit On Protracted War.”
On Protracted War was a series of speeches made by
Chairman Mao during the Sino-Japanese War in 1938.
This Beijing Daily article is very
Marxist. It blames America’s problems
on the capitalist system, it talks
a lot about dialectal materialism,
and it repeatedly refers
to the “US-China struggle.”
I’ve talked before about how “struggle”
or “douzheng” is the communist concept of
designating an enemy and mobilizing the
entire society to “struggle” against it.
In this case, the enemy is obviously the US.
According to the article, “The
Party Central Committee had
already anticipated the long-term
nature of the China-U.S. rivalry
and proactively laid out plans for
future major power competition.”
In other words, the CCP is in it for the
long haul. The gist of the article is
warning that the US-China struggle will
not be over quickly, but that the CCP,
sorry, “the people” will ultimately
win over the imperialist Americans.
So that’s what the CCP is saying. But what’s
actually happening in China right now?
Well, since it’s an authoritarian state
with total control over its domestic media
and a huge online censorship apparatus, we’re
not going to get a totally clear picture.
But we do know some things. And it
looks like the CCP is saying one thing,
and doing another. What a surprise!
First, you know that earlier this month, the
CCP put additional tariffs on US imports,
in retaliation for US tariffs. But now,
it looks like the CCP is going to exempt
some US products from those tariffs,
because they really really need them.
“Those products include certain semiconductors and
chipmaking equipment, medical
products and aviation parts.”
They could also exempt chemicals like ethane,
which China uses to make a ton of plastics.
Does that sound like a compromise, even though
the CCP swore they would never do that? Yeah,
they’re going to be flexible with their
tariffs on US goods when they need to
be—but they don’t want people to know about it.
In fact, Caijing Magazine, which was
the first to report that China was
going to exempt semiconductors,
seems to have been censored.
Meanwhile, Chinese export companies
are trying to survive the US tariffs.
Some smaller factories are temporarily pausing
operations or even completely shutting down.
(Others are trying to get around tariffs by using
transshipment—for example sending products to
be assembled in countries like Cambodia and
Vietnam, which then get re-routed to the US.
There are even reports of Chinese companies asking
Indian exporters to fill their
orders for their US customers.
The idea is the Indian companies
would fulfill the orders,
and pay the Chinese companies a commission.
And foreign companies are trying to move
their manufacturing out of China, too.
For example, Apple is trying to
source all of its US iPhones from
India instead of China. And they’re
looking to do it as soon as next year.
The CCP isn’t a fan of that idea though.
CCP officials are trying to stop Apple
from moving their iPhone manufacturing
equipment out of China. Yeah, they’re
kind of taking machines hostage.
Well, that’s awkward.
Foreign clothing manufacturers are
also trying to get out of China.
Or even sending Chinese workers to
factories in the Philippines or Vietnam.
And factory owners from Hong Kong and Taiwan
are trying to avoid physically being at their
own factories in China, because they’re worried
about being kidnapped by Chinese authorities.
Ok, so forget taking machines hostage. People
are worried China will take people hostage.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
So doing business in China is like
staying at the Hotel California.
You can check out anytime you
like, but you can never leave.
Side note: I don’t know if it still is, but in
the early 2000s, Hotel California was one of the
most popular Western songs in China. You could
not get away from it. And I have no idea why.
Anyway, the point is, Chinese factories are
trying to get their products out of China,
and foreign companies are trying to
get their factories out of China.
Which means, the US tariffs are…actually working.
At least in terms of decoupling
US manufacturing from China.
And that’s good news for Americans. Because
we don’t want our economy to be held hostage
by a regime that will…literally hold
people hostage to get what they want.
Especially since the CCP also sees
America as a threat to its survival.
And it’s not just me saying that. Here’s
Cold War historian Professor Stephen Kotkin.
“The existence of the American
system ipso facto threatens the
survival of the Communist Party because it's a
freer—it's an open, successful alternative.”)
Kotkin goes on to say that it doesn’t
matter what US policy is toward China,
the CCP will always see the
US as standing in its way.
That’s pretty clear from their
latest propaganda narrative.
“China won’t kneel down”)
So what happens now? The CCP refuses
to back down, at least publicly. But
companies are actually leaving China
and China’s economy is getting wrecked.
Can the CCP actually force people to eat
bitterness and ride out the trade war?
Yes they can, because they’re an authoritarian
state. But that doesn’t mean there
won’t eventually be consequences.
Look at what happened during
the Zero Covid lockdowns.
Eventually Chinese people reached a breaking point
and started to protest. Which is the
Communist Party’s worst nightmare.
The best case scenario for the CCP is that
the US simply backs down from all the tariffs,
under pressure from various interest groups.
To do that, the CCP needs to convince
Americans that China is too strong to
get hurt, and America is the one getting screwed.
In other words, China needs
to win the narrative war.
Which means these posts
are exactly what it needs.
And unfortunately the Trump
administration doesn’t seem to be
doing a good job of telling Americans
why tariffs on China are important.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think we
should have a country that sees America
as its enemy making everything from
our children’s toys to our medicines.
But you know what they don’t make?
Our toilet paper. USA number…2!!!
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Thanks for watching. I’m Chris
Chappell. See you next time.