By agreeing to meet with the Trump administration to discuss trade, China is seeking to cast itself as the responsible one in a bruising superpower competition that has roiled the global financial system and set off fears of a recession.
For weeks, China had publicly said that it would not engage in trade talks with the United States under duress, refusing to “kneel down” and compromise with a “bully.” It insisted that Washington should first drop its eye-watering tariffs on China as a condition for negotiations.
On Wednesday, Beijing indicated it would come to the table after all, saying that its top trade official, He Lifeng, would meet with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Switzerland this week. Even so, it maintained a tough stance, warning Washington against using the talks as “a smoke screen to continue coercion and extortion.”
The Chinese government said it had come to this decision “based on a full consideration of global expectations, China’s interests and the calls of American industry and consumers,” suggesting that it was doing so largely for the greater good.
“China is trying to frame itself as the responsible party, but it’s still a pretty hard-line tone: You better behave yourself in these talks,” said Yun Sun, a China analyst at the Stimson Center.
But the move is still a softening of China’s stance, at a time when economic data has shown that the trade brinkmanship was taking a toll on both countries’ economies.
The Trump administration’s decision to raise tariffs on Chinese goods imported to the United States by 145 percent, and China’s response in hiking its own tariffs on American goods to 125 percent, has effectively frozen all trade between the two countries in recent weeks.
Chinese factories were hit with the steepest slowdown in activity in more than a year, and shipments of Chinese goods to the United States have plunged, triggering a wave of warnings from retailers about shortages. The American economy shrank in the first three months of the year, and companies slashed growth forecasts.
Both the United States and China seem interested in reducing the tariffs, but neither side has wanted to make the initial concession. It also remains unclear if, or how quickly, the two countries might strike any kind of deal, or what its specifics could be.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday night, Mr. Bessent said he expected the meeting with Chinese officials in Switzerland to focus on de-escalation rather than any major deal.
“We’ve got to de-escalate before we can move forward,” Mr. Bessent said.
For its part, China wants to show that it will be coming to the negotiations from a position of strength, even though the U.S. had not canceled tariffs first as Beijing had demanded. In recent days it has repeatedly said that U.S. officials had reached out for talks and that it was considering the request.
“The Chinese are trying to avoid the image that the Chinese were eager to talk,” Ms. Sun said.
Chinese officials will likely be treating the trade talks as a fact-finding mission.
“The Chinese want to find out what Donald Trump is really up to, and you can only get this by engaging in direct talks,” said Wang Xiangwei, an associate professor of journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Until now, for instance, it has not been entirely clear to Beijing which Trump officials were in charge of future negotiations with China, Mr. Wang said.
Part of the challenge in dealing with the Trump administration on trade is that the direction of policy seems to vary depending on who is speaking. Peter Navarro, a senior White House trade adviser and the architect of many of Mr. Trump’s trade plans, has defended the tariffs as necessary, while Mr. Bessent has said the U.S. is willing to negotiate with countries.
Even as the Trump administration appeared more willing to find an off-ramp to the trade standoff, there were still some questions about what tone the administration would strike during the talks, which Mr. Bessent said on Fox News would be held on Saturday and Sunday.
China said Mr. He was going to be in Geneva from Friday to Monday for meetings with Swiss leaders and that while he was there he would also meet Mr. Bessent. The Trump administration said Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, would also attend the meetings, though China did not mention Mr. Greer in its own statements about the talks.
Finding out what Mr. Trump wants from China and what he is willing to concede in negotiations would be useful to Beijing as it figures out its response. China has also been trying to persuade other countries not to cave to pressure from the Trump administration’s efforts to isolate China by imposing tariffs of their own on Chinese products, or by decoupling from Chinese manufacturing.
For Beijing, artfully lowering the temperature without looking weak in the face of Mr. Trump’s tariffs could help its own efforts to revitalize its economy. Chinese officials have been under pressure at home from the fallout of both a multiyear property crisis that has wiped out the savings of many families, along with broader trade tensions with countries other than the United States.
China’s central bank and its financial regulators on Wednesday took their biggest policy steps yet to shield the economy from the trade war, moving to shore up the economy with a series of steps to make it easier for banks to lend money and get people spending.
The Trump administration’s “tariff policies have dealt a severe blow to the international economic and trade order, triggered significant turbulence in international financial markets, and placed considerable pressure on the domestic capital market,” said Wu Qing, China’s stock regulator, at a press briefing with top officials.
The Chinese side also comes to the talks emboldened by the knowledge that President Trump has blinked in the face of a sharp sell-off in U.S. government bond markets, and broader financial market turbulence. The midterm elections in the United States could exert some pressure on President Trump to lower or cut tariffs if consumer prices rise as a result of a shortage of goods.
The Chinese “still have the upper hand, but their economy is slowing,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research group. “If they totally stonewall the Trump administration, they could end up looking complicit in bringing the global economy to a halt.”
Zixu Wang contributed reporting.
