China Will Fight US Tariffs Even at Famine-Level Cost: Insider
Udumbara
As Washington and Beijing remain locked in a high-stakes tariff war, an insider said Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials are willing to engage in a long-term conflict with the United States.
According to the insider, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s close ally, Cai Qi, said at a high-level CCP meeting to assess the U.S.–China tariff war that the Chinese populace must endure the resulting economic strain—even if it causes suffering for the Chinese people on par with the Great Famine of 1959 to 1961, which killed an estimated 40 million across rural China.
Australia-based Chinese dissident and former law professor at Peking University, Yuan Hongbing, told The Epoch Times that Xi has instructed CCP officials to re-study Mao Zedong’s 1938 lecture “On Protracted War” as a framework for responding to U.S. tariffs. Yuan cited his information from a well-placed source whose family belongs to the CCP’s so-called “princeling” class, the second generation of the founders of communist China.
Mao’s lecture at the time emphasized that there would be no quick victory against the Japanese invasion, and that China must rely on a prolonged struggle and the mobilization of the entire population.
Xi’s broader strategy for countering U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods includes selectively lowering tariffs on certain American goods to ease domestic economic pressure, while maintaining a confrontational stance and attempting to sow discord within U.S. society, Yuan said.
According to Yuan’s source, Cai Qi said the regime survived the “economic catastrophe” of the Great Famine and referred to its cause as “three years of natural disasters.”
The famine was a direct consequence of Mao’s Great Leap Forward—a radical and aggressive economic campaign carried out by the CCP’s new centrally-planned system.
During those three years, starving peasants resorted to eating leaves, tree bark, and grass to alleviate their hunger.
Cai Qi, a top aide to Xi since 2022, is known for advocating absolute loyalty to Xi and endorsing Xi’s status as the supreme authority.
Cai has also long been criticized for his policies. In late 2017, while serving as Beijing mayor, he initiated a large-scale eviction campaign targeting so-called “low-end population” residents—primarily domestic migrant workers—following a deadly fire in Daxing District that killed 19 people, including 17 migrants.
The city launched a 40-day operation to demolish structures deemed unsafe, displacing tens of thousands of migrant workers. Many were given only a few hours or days to vacate their homes, with threats of water and electricity being cut off if they did not comply. The evictions took place during Beijing’s harsh winter, with temperatures near freezing, leaving many without shelter, power, or heat.
Yuan said the CCP’s plan to extend the tariff war no matter the cost might backfire.
“The situation in China has changed dramatically,” he said. “The Chinese people are no longer as isolated as they were in the 1950s. People are more informed and aware. The CCP can’t continue to manipulate the public in the same way.”
