China’s new intellectual star had warned Beijing it was being too complacent over Donald Trump
Trade war vindicates previously unknown academic’s warning that US president’s anti-China diatribes should not be dismissed as campaign rhetoric
A contrarian Chinese research report published two years ago that challenged the consensus that Donald Trump’s rhetorical threats could be safely ignored has left the unknown professor who wrote it basking in the spotlight.
One week after the election in November 2016 – in which Trump had repeatedly singled out China as a threat to US interests – economics professor Yang Qijing wrote that some in China mistakenly considered his victory a strategic opportunity that would support China’s rise.
Instead, that assessment was very likely to be “an over-optimistic and very dangerous strategic misjudgment,” Yang wrote, warning that China needed to study immediate countermeasures to the policies Trump would pursue.
The paper published by the National Academy of Development and Strategy – a think tank at the Renmin University of China in Beijing – was ignored when it was first issued, as many experts believed China could call Trump’s bluff on trade tariffs and treat his threats as empty words designed to satisfy his domestic audience.
But as the trade war between the world’s two largest economies has escalated, the paper has been dug out of the archives and widely circulated as evidence of how ill-prepared China was for the confrontational new US policy.
Critics charge that Chinese experts on US affairs misread Trump and the changing mood in Washington and therefore failed to give good advice to China’s top leadership.
Yang said that his predictions about Trump were made off the top of his head and that he was surprised the paper was even published because he had not treated it as a true academic exercise.