President-elect Donald Trump says he will push China hard on trade — and many are wondering how Beijing will push back.
A number of Beijing watchers say leaders there are already brainstorming ways to reply if Trump does in fact push forward with trade agreements that make life harder for Chinese companies that export into the United States.
“China will try to have a disproportionate response. If the U. S. action is ‘X,’ China’s reaction will be ‘2X,'” said James Keith, who leads the Asia practice of geopolitical consulting firm McLarty Associates and is the former deputy assistant Secretary of State for China.
Keith, who was also former director for China on the National Security Council, said the most practical response would be slapping a tariff on U. S. exports to China, which would likely hurt large multinational corporations that rely on trade with the world’s second largest economy.
“China will attempt to educate the new administration the cost of a trade war,” said Keith.
Experts at think tank Capital Economics agree that imposing a similar tax or tariff on companies that rely on trade or business with China is a plausible scenario.
“U. S. companies would find their products and operations in China subject to tighter regulation that hampered their capacity to do business there,” wrote Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, in a research note to clients in mid-November.
A trade war would most likely have a negative effect on China’s economy, thereby pushing policymakers there to open the floodgates with easy money or other stimulus.
Williams forecasts that Beijing’s leadership team would try to offset any weakness in its economy that stemmed from a drop in export demand by loosening its monetary or fiscal policy.
“Stimulus is one thing China’s government does well,” wrote Williams.
Wells Fargo points out that this could help China accelerate its push to become a consumption-based economy.
“Instead of trying to duke it out on the trade front with the U. S., they [China] may try to become less dependent on growth and demand from its biggest trading partner, and try to invest in domestic growth,” said Sameer Samana, global quantitative strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
Wall Street is most fearful of a Chinese yuan that weakens significantly against the U. S. dollar.
The last two times the People’s Bank of China has allowed the yuan to fall significantly against the dollar, global stocks responded violently. Beginning in 2016, however Beijing has done the exact opposite — defending the currency in order to counter the rally in the U. S. dollar.
Last week, the offshore Chinese yuan that trades in Hong Kong posted a record two-day surge, easing concerns that another one-off devaluation may take place in 2017. Some traders say that Beijing is attempting to shield itself from the “currency manipulator” label that the president-elect often throws China’s way.
Despite last week’s move, however, currency strategists still see the yuan gradually depreciating against the dollar in 2017, by around 5-6 percent.
North Square Blue Oak, a China policy investment bank, told CNBC that the biggest uncertainty for the yuan is whether the incoming U. S. administration will follow through on its previous rhetoric, in particular its talk of implementing tariffs on Chinese imports, spending heavily on U. S. infrastructure, and slashing U. S. corporate taxes.
Duncan Wrigley, chief strategist at North Square Blue Oak, also sees Trump’s handling of Taiwan being a key focal point for investors.
“There is the black swan of escalating Sino-U. S. military confrontation” that stems from Trump’s “casual attitude toward the long-standing U. S. one-China policy,” he said.
Keith of McLarty Associates concurred: “If the U. S. shifts its position on Taiwan independence, then all parts of U. S./China relations will be affected. “

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Clare Hollingworth, the veteran British war correspondent who broke the news that World War Two had started, has died in Hong Kong at the age of 105.
Hollingworth, who was born in Leicester in 1911, broke the story of Germany’s invasion of Poland in August 1939.
She went on to report from Vietnam, Algeria and the Middle East.
Hollingworth was a rookie reporter for the Daily Telegraph when she fell upon “the scoop of the century”.
It was she who spotted German forces amassed on the Polish border while travelling from Poland to Germany in 1939.
The Daily Telegraph headline read: “1,000 tanks massed on Polish border. Ten divisions reported ready for swift strike” – but it did not carry her byline, a common practice for newspapers at the time.
She scored another scoop when the Nazis launched their invasion three days later.
A later exclusive, about the British spy Kim Philby, was spiked by The Guardian in 1963.
Convinced Philby was part of the spy ring that included Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, she wrote that he had defected to Russia only to have her story put on ice for three months.
Before becoming a reporter, Hollingworth helped rescue thousands of people from Hitler’s forces by arranging British visas.
Margo Stanyer, one of those she helped, remembered her on Tuesday as “a grand lady who was in the right place at the right time”.
The reporter narrowly escaped death herself in 1946 when a bomb blast destroyed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
Nearly 100 people died in the explosion, from which she was just 300 yards away.
By Juliana Liu, BBC Hong Kong correspondent
When I arrived in Hong Kong in 2012, there were two giants of journalism still with us: Anthony Lawrence and Clare Hollingworth. Both centenarians. Both legends. And both lived fully to the end.
Anthony, my BBC predecessor by 50 plus years, passed on in 2013 at the age of 101. Clare, though, seemed like she would live forever.
She had her own corner table at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, where she had visited daily. And until just a few years ago, according to club lore, she had her passport and bag packed, ready to go for the next breaking news story.
She was an inspiration to all, but was especially inspiring to the growing cadre of women correspondents. In her long, distinguished career she paved the way for us. She proved that being female was no obstacle.
Clare was larger than life. But what I will always remember is her zest for life. At her 105th birthday party in October, we – her friends, family and colleagues – toasted her with champagne.
When offered her own glass, she relished it with as much enthusiasm as she lived her very full and trail-blazing life.
Hollingworth received the James Cameron Award for Journalism in 1994 and a lifetime achievement award at the What the Papers Say awards in 1999.
The journalist, who was married twice, lived her last four decades in Hong Kong after working from Beijing in the 1970s.
In later life she was a regular at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) in Hong Kong, where she celebrated her 105th birthday last October.
Tara Joseph, president of the FCC, said Hollingworth had been “a tremendous inspiration” and a “treasured member”.
A statement on the Celebrate Clare Hollingworth Facebook page read : “We are sad to announce that after an illustrious career spanning a century of news… Clare Hollingworth died this evening. ”
Follow us on Facebook , on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts , or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk .

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The former British colony, governed by China since 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula that grants it a high degree of autonomy, was rocked last year by controversies that critics saw as signs of a squeeze by Beijing on its freedoms.
The year began with the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers, among them two British and Swedish passport holders, who were widely believed to have been abducted by Chinese security and held in custody on the mainland.
In November, China’s parliament intervened in a Hong Kong court case that ultimately disqualified two pro-independence lawmakers for failing to take an official oath, by passing a ruling on the city’s mini-constitution during the hearings.
“The unwarranted disappearance of the booksellers, as well as the unfortunate, preemptive interpretation of the Basic Law by the National People’s Congress with respect to official oath-taking, have contributed to a sense among many in Hong Kong that Beijing may be losing sight of the importance of respecting Hong Kong’s autonomy,” Tong said in some of his strongest public comments since taking over as U. S. consul general five months ago.
The remarks came a day after the Hong Kong Bar Association kicked off the legal year with a warning that political expedience “must not be given precedence over the rule of law,” referring to Beijing’s intervention.
Tong, added, however, that he remained “hopeful” Beijing would respect Hong Kong’s autonomy, urging Hong Kong residents to go ahead and tackle various issues of the day, and “spend less time worrying about what Beijing thinks”.
Ten days before Donald Trump is inaugurated, Tong said he did not expect any major shift in the U. S.-China relationship, despite the U. S. president-elect’s often critical Twitter remarks about China’s economic, military and foreign policies.
“Overall, I would tend to expect more consistency than inconsistency in our approaches to the region, and that includes Hong Kong,” Tong said of the incoming administration.
(Reporting by Venus Wu and James Pomfret; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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It has sent rockets into space, produced millions of the world’s smartphones and built high-speed trains. But until now, one bit of manufacturing had perhaps unexpectedly eluded China: the ballpoint pen.
A year ago Premier Li Keqiang went on national television and bemoaned the failure of his country to produce a good quality version of this seemingly-simple implement.
Locally-made versions felt “rough” compared to those from Germany, Switzerland and Japan, Mr Li complained.
The problem was not the body of the pen, but the tip – the tiny ball that dispenses ink as you write.
It might be something we take for granted, but making them requires high-precision machinery and very hard, ultra-thin steel plates.
Put simply, China’s steel has not been good enough. And it has struggled to shape its pen tips accurately.
Without that ability, China’s 3,000 penmakers have had to import this crucial component from abroad, costing the industry a reported 120m yuan ($17.3m; £14.3m) a year.
But according to People’s Daily, the state-owned Taiyuan Iron and Steel Co thinks it has cracked the problem, after five years of research.
The first batch of 2.3-millimetre ballpoint pen tips has recently rolled off its production lines, the paper says.
And once lab tests are completed, it’s expected China could phase out pen tip imports completely within two years.
On one level, whether China can make a great pen is not hugely important in the scheme of things.
High-tech and innovative manufacturing lie at the heart of the central government’s Made in China 2025 programme – designed to help domestic growth.
Relatively low-value items, like ballpoint pens, have not been a priority.
But the pen-conundrum is a symbolic one.
Despite producing more than half of the world’s crude iron and steel, China has still heavily relied on imports for high-grade steel.
It was a failing that Mr Li said highlighted the need to upgrade China’s manufacturing capabilities.
“Historically, China has never been able to do precision engineering very well and the ballpoint pen is an example of that,” says Professor George Huang, head of the University of Hong Kong’s department of industrial and mechanical engineering.
“Its parts are so small and very precise, and it’s not easy to solve this problem”
Precision engineering is thriving only in certain sectors such as aerospace and defence where the government has placed a high priority, says Prof Huang.
Even when it comes to smartphones and computers, the high end computer chips are usually imported from Japan and Taiwan.
Prof Huang says that China lacks a culture of excellence in precision engineering.
He uses the Mandarin term “fucao” or “floating grass”, a euphemism for something that is not 100% solid or reliable.
“The culture is different from the Japanese and Germans,” he says, who are known for innovation in engineering.
“We Chinese are supposed to be craftsmen, but somehow the spirit is not as good. ”
Additional reporting by the BBC’s Tessa Wong.

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