The Chinese regime issued a response to additional U.S. tariffs that hit goods from China on Tuesday, saying it’s ready to fight any type of war that the United States wants.
President Donald Trump last month imposed a 10 percent duty on imports from China and increased that rate to 20 percent on March 4, citing the regime’s failure to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States.
Speaking to reporters in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian described the U.S. tariffs as “intimidation” and “bullying,” and that “anyone using maximum pressure on China is picking the wrong guy and miscalculating.”
Asked about the embassy’s post on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” program, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded that the United States is “prepared.”
“Those who long for peace must prepare for war,” he said.
‘Wolf Warrior’ Diplomacy
Yeh Yao-Yuan, professor of international studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, told The Epoch Times that instead of real willingness to fight a war with the United States, Beijing is continuing its “wolf warrior” style of diplomacy to appear tough, and it’s likely because the Foreign Ministry doesn’t know how to find a solution where Beijing would gain benefits.Regarding the punitive tariffs on China, the Trump administration has given a clear signal that it wants to bring Beijing to the negotiation table, but the Chinese regime doesn’t want to be forced to the table, he said.
Yeh said Beijing has long prioritized saving face over substance on the international stage because the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its leader Xi Jinping have “spent lots of time” stoking nationalist sentiment within the Chinese population and painting the United States as an imaginary enemy.
“It’s just a continuation of the wolf warrior diplomacy,” he said.
“To maintain the narrative and the consistency of this internal propaganda,” the regime has to appear “very tough.”
Fentanyl and its analogues have caused tens of thousands of overdose deaths a year in the United States. A report released last year by the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Community Party identified China as the “ultimate geographic source” of the fentanyl crisis in the United States. The report found that Chinese companies are the main producers of the precursors used to make fentanyl.
The Chinese regime has repeatedly dismissed U.S. criticisms that it has fueled America’s fentanyl crisis, saying that China has some of “the strictest and most thorough drug control policies in the world” and has supported the U.S. effort to tackle the crisis out of goodwill.
Trump previously said the communist regime’s “most sophisticated domestic surveillance network” and “most comprehensive domestic law enforcement apparatus,” and its routine harassment of political dissidents outside of China, show it “does not lack the capacity to severely blunt the global illicit opioid epidemic; it simply is unwilling to do so.”
Yeh said if Beijing responded to Trump’s tariffs with measures to tighten the control on fentanyl, it would be an “admission that it had harmed the United States with fentanyl in the past years.”
The regime may also find it more beneficial to weaken and divide the United States with fentanyl, he added.
On the likelihood of a hot war involving the United States and China, especially in the Taiwan Strait, the Taiwan-born professor said the U.S. military posture in the Indo-Pacific and Trump’s China strategy will “significantly affect China’s military readiness.”
Without sufficient confidence to win in an invasion of Taiwan, Xi will unlikely launch a war, unless the CCP faces an “unsolvable” challenge, such as a major collapse of the Chinese economy or internal factional power struggles among top CCP leaders, he said.
