The first reaction by China’s state-media apparatus following the escalating U.S.-China trade war last week was to censor online commentary about the scale of tariffs. Now, it has responded with targeted messaging intended to not only rally the Chinese public around a nationalist defense, but also demoralize the American public about the costs of economic decoupling from China. The Economist summarized this shift with a headline on Wednesday that read, “China’s propagandists preach defiance in the trade war with America.” Lily Kuo at The Washington Post reported on Thursday about “China’s PR blitz” and its chances of success:

In the two weeks since Trump launched what he called his “Liberation Day” tariff blitz, Chinese diplomats have taken to X and Facebook — platforms that are banned within China — to post archival footage of President Ronald Reagan deploring trade wars and former Chinese leader Mao Zedong declaring China’s determination to defeat the United States in the Korean War.

Chinese state media have reposted a TikTok video made with AI that shows unhappy American workers sewing garments and assembling smartphones, with the caption: “Make America Great Again.” Several times a week, the state-run China Media Group has been sending personalized emails to reporters covering the trade war, offering them updates on China’s perspective.

[...] “It is not so much a change in China’s propaganda tactics, but that Trump himself messed up, allowing China’s propaganda to score points,” said Deng Yuwen, former deputy editor of the Communist Party-affiliated Study Times, who now lives in the U.S. “The huge controversy caused by the Trump administration has allowed the Chinese government’s methods to win points.”

[...] Now, Beijing is also delivering that message in catchy short videos and snarky memes aimed directly at Americans. A video posted on Facebook earlier this month by Guo Jiakun, a Foreign Ministry official, featured images of stock market indexes crashing and streets full of American protesters, while a narrator intoned in English: “The so-called global beacon now puts America first. … With China here, the sky won’t fall.” [Source]

Some of these efforts have backfired against domestic Chinese audiences. A CCTV account on Douyin published an AI-generated video that showed a factory assembly line of gloomy American government officials, including Trump and J.D. Vance, which evoked a satirical future of revitalized U.S. manufacturing that Trump seeks through his trade war. As CDT Chinese editors highlighted, many netizens criticized the video for its tone-deaf mockery of lower-income, labor-intensive jobs that many Chinese citizens are forced to endure in the present. In response to the avalanche of comments, the account closed the comment section and eventually deleted the video. A selection of critical comments have been translated below:

枫落秋末：The work you look down on is exactly what Chinese workers do every day.

¥金金：I don’t even know who this is trying to humiliate.

热拿铁：What’s the point of this? You’re mocking your own people.

BFSUNSET2887：What you hate is my life.

Xiaxia1357346：Officials know that factory work is grueling and poorly paid, yet they still claim that Chinese folks are poor because they don’t work hard enough.

sinji198183：You’re shooting yourself in the foot here.

WeileiFromSanqi：This is basically the consensus of the Chinese elite: the lives of the lower class are not worth living. If by some stroke of bad luck, they could no longer live an upper-class life, they would rather die.

Nick22022420863：This isn’t America’s desired future; it’s the Chinese people’s present. [Chinese]

Le Monde reported that Chinese influencers have flooded American social media platforms and urged American users to bypass American tariffs by buying goods directly from Chinese factories, which allegedly procure the same goods for a cheaper price than retailers. Some of these videos have received millions of views, propelling Chinese cross-border e-commerce app DHgate, which allows users to buy directly from Chinese factories, to become the second-most popular app on Apple’s App Store in the U.S. on Wednesday. But this alleged workaround may not last long, since the Trump administration’s elimination of the de minimis rule—which exempted Chinese shippers from paying U.S. taxes on goods worth less than $800—will go into effect on May 2. Moreover, many Chinese workers are already suffering from the impacts of the trade war. Yaling Jiang and Rongrong Zhuge at the Following the Yuan Substack shared RedNote posts by Chinese exporters and factory workers, including one from an employee who had just been laid off from their job at a cross-border e-commerce company:

“Who understands? I’ve been working at this company for almost four years, thinking I’d be here until retirement… But then, I received the news — the company had to close down due to 🇺🇸 tariffs! Our boss was truly amazing. He treated all of us like friends. Not only did he pay us our full month’s salary, but he also prepared personal farewell gifts for everyone. I’m so moved 🥹

No fake marketing here, just sharing my personal dramatic experience. I didn’t expect so many others are in the same situation. Please, don’t misjudge based on this.”

Comments:

• So soon, shouldn’t your company wait and see? Maybe your boss has been wanting to quit for a while, that’s why they’re lying flat. // The payroll cost must be high, I assume most of their businesses are with the US. The policy isn’t stable and the uncertainty may last a while. [Source]