How Should China Respond to Trump’s New Round of Trade War? An Unprecedented Debate Among Chinese IR Scholars

Abstract

The US-China trade war finally broke out in 2018 after more than a decade of gradual decline in bilateral relations. This article reviews the fierce debates among China’s most prominent international relations (IR) scholars and, respectively, some economists and business elites on various topics related to US-China relations, in particular, the trade war, from 2017 to 2020. Specifically, it addresses four topics: the causes for the decline in US-China relations, Beijing’s policy and strategy for dealing with Trump’s trade war, the impact of the ‘decoupling’ on China and the prospects for future bilateral relations. Intellectual elites try to influence government policies by participating in debates while the government also applies various means to influence scholars’ views and shape public opinion on the Internet. The article finds that Chinese scholars’ discussions on the trade war and Beijing’s policies were actually influenced by factors other than trade. If Washington adopts appropriate policies in the future, Beijing may still make concessions in the interests of the United States on trade and security issues.