Why China used foreign sources to make its case as the defender of free trade in its war with the United States

Beijing’s reliance on overseas sources for its 36,000-word white paper on the trade war is an attempt to convince an international audience that China is a victim in the dispute and the true defender of free trade, observers said.

Of the paper’s 88 footnotes, only a handful cite China’s National Bureau of Statistics or Ministry of Commerce, with the vast majority referring to overseas research, think tanks and analysts, from former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to specialists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Analysts said that using respected US and other foreign sources to make its argument strengthened the intended appeal of the document, which was also released in eight languages.

Released on Monday, the white paper – “Facts about the China-US trade dispute and China’s stance” – is China’s most comprehensive explanation of its trade-war position to date.

The release was unusual in that it came during the Mid-Autumn Festival, a major Chinese public holiday. But it also came just an hour after US tariffs on an additional US$200 billion of Chinese imports took effect and followed Beijing’s decision on Saturday to refuse a US invitation for new talks to try to resolve the trade war.

Shi Yinhong, a government adviser and professor of international relations at Beijing’s Renmin University, said that the release was deliberately timed to “highlight the biggest confrontation in China-US trade relations in decades”.