5/29/2019 Opinion | Trump Hands China an Easy Win in the Trade War - The New York Times Trump Hands China an Easy Win in the Trade War The presidentʼs tough rhetoric plays into Chinese economic nationalism. By Kevin Rudd Mr. Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia, is the president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. May 29, 2019 When President Trump tweeted on May 5 that the China trade deal was off, the historical echoes in Beijing were loud and clear. Almost exactly 100 years earlier, China’s “May Fourth Movement” of 1919 was a direct response to the actions of President Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I. Wilson had promised China, an American ally, that German colonies in Shandong would be returned to Chinese sovereignty, but instead handed them to Japan. China exploded with anti- American, nationalist sentiment. One of the eventual consequences was the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, which for the last 70 years has ruled the country. Thus, Mr. Trump has handed Xi Jinping a remarkably effective nationalist card to play at a time when he has been under pressure at home because of a slowing economy. The Chinese media is now full of accounts of the country’s economic resilience and appeals to patriotism, even invoking the spirit of the Korean War, when, according to the official narrative, China was able to stare down the vastly superior American military. And just in case people didn’t get the point, Mr. Xi recently visited Jiangxi, the starting point of the Long March in 1934, in which the Communist Party endured many hardships but ultimately emerged victorious. I can almost hear members of the Trump administration groaning. Why on earth would they need to take into consideration events in China’s ancient past? The answer depends on what Mr. Trump’s primary objective is. If it’s to sound tough to American voters, he may well have a winning formula. But if it’s to bring about a substantive change in China’s negotiating posture toward a b