Why China Suddenly Loves Reagan

Given China’s 76-year rule under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the USA’s historic crusade against Communist ideology, and the contemporary Cold War raging on the battlegrounds of stock market statistics and corporate balance sheets, April 7th was a rather surreal day. Provoking the need to diligently rub your eyes, the Chinese Embassy in the United States posted - of all things - an anti-tariff speech delivered by Ronald Reagan, commenting that his words held “new relevance in 2025”, referencing Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with China.

A quick check of the UK Labour and Conservative party X accounts (ensuring they hadn’t started throwing around Thatcher or Corbyn speeches respectively) confirmed this was not a well-staged political opposite day, and a subsequent check of my pulse seemed to indicate a degree of personal functionality persisted. 

With these doubts addressed, it was clear: The CCP was reflecting upon Reagan, a man revered with biblical grace in the messianic neoliberal episteme, with an uncanny fondness that feels ideologically uneasy. The expression, “the timeline is broken” has circulated ferociously online since, capturing the baffling geopolitical landscape in which we’re residing. 

In policy terms, the CCP has been slowly embracing elements of Reaganomics for decades. The ‘Growth Miracle’ of China’s transition from a planned self-dependent agrarian society to a mixed-market economy engaged in international trade flows has gradually eroded traditional far-leftist economic dogma. Yet the largely tokenistic identity separation from the thematic elements of American market liberalisation has persisted, that is until now. 

The Trumpian trade war, described by the BBC as now in “sharper focus” between America and China, has had tariff blows raging between the superpowers, an affair which appears to have dulled the CCP’s desire for symbolic distance. 

The USA is currently imposing an 124.1% tariff rate on Chinese exports, a significant threat to the over $500 billion contribution these exports make to the Chinese economy, amounting to 15% of China’s total exports. China has retaliated with an 147.6% tariff blow on US exports, presenting the inevitable blow-for-blow nature of this heavyweight clash. Geopolitical commentators and economists are only guessing at who will stumble backwards first, and that’s where Reagan comes in.

Trump’s protectionist policies are antithetical to the liberal economics long espoused by the United States - they fundamentally oppose the direction American fiscal policy has headed since the free-market Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. China is exploiting this knot on the US’ economic growth, tactically highlighting it to erode the legitimacy of Trump’s economic policies, no doubt in a bid to further undermine US market confidence, as if they weren’t jittery enough with the US500 down almost 1,000 points since mid-February.

By betraying its traditional resentment of Reagan and his hawkish anti-Communist rhetoric, the CCP is drawing America’s attention to the ideological hollowing of the Republican Party. The speech the Chinese Embassy posted, given by Reagan in 1987, is a declaration against the ill-guided and detrimental nature of trade protectionism, in which he warns “more than 5 million American jobs are directly tied to the foreign export business” (a figure closer to 39 million today), notioning that although protectionism “looks like… the patriotic thing”, by imposing tariffs, it results in stagnant, uncompetitive and government reliant industries. This philosophy has been deep-rooted amongst Republicans since Reagan, and its current dearth is an unnatural oddity in US politics which the CCP means to exploit. 

In posting the speech, the CCP offers an unlikely source of soft endorsement of Reaganomics. It calls upon Americans to query what this new form of Trumpist Americanism even is, given that China appears more aligned with decades of US economic policy than the US itself. 

The exceptional autobiography of Reagan, accurately entitled ‘An American Life’, reflects upon his deeply ingrained American identity. A former football commentator, Hollywood star, and, of course, President, Reagan is as American as a cheeseburger, a Mustang, or the toppling of a foreign government - and if he doesn’t support these waves of unruly protectionism, why should any American?

The classic debate strategy of using your opponent's words against them is on full display. China is dabbling in ideological weaponry to erode the position of the Trump administration, a sprinkle of dust in the eye, encouraging America to blink in its ongoing trade war. In this financial conflict, Ronald Reagan is a polarising and deeply American weapon that has been turned against the States in such an unusual fashion that you have to deliberate whether we’ve ended up in someone’s alternate history.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/National Archives (White House Photographic Collection, 1/20/1981 - 1/20/1989)

Licence: public domain

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