Why Tariffs on China Do Not Mean the Same as Tariffs on Europe
Tariffs as a Symbol of Decline or Geopolitical Reaffirmation
During the early decades of the 19th century, China was the main power in East Asia, with a consolidated imperial structure, a highly productive agrarian economy, and a culture that saw itself as the civilized center of the world. The term Zhōngguó (中国)—“Middle Kingdom”—was not just a geographic label, but a political and cosmological assertion: China viewed itself as the natural axis of order, around which lesser civilizations revolved in a tributary hierarchy reflecting both moral superiority and the institutional stability of the dynastic system.
Economically, China was a pre-industrial manufacturing power. Its agriculture, based on intensive techniques and well-developed irrigation systems, ensured sustained food security. Upon this base flourished artisanal sectors of the highest sophistication: silk, porcelain, and tea were not only luxury goods in Europe, but symbols of technical ability that the continent admired but could not replicate. Chinese tea, in particular, became a national obsession for England from the 18th century, representing up to 90% of its imports from China at the start of the 19th century.
Trade with European powers, however, was severely restricted. It was only allowed at the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and under strict state supervision. Moreover, the empire had no interest in European products, which were considered inferior or irrelevant to the Chinese economy. Since the authorities required that transactions be conducted exclusively in silver, a chronic imbalance in the trade balance was created: the United Kingdom—fresh out of the Industrial Revolution—exported large quantities of silver to China but could not sell products in proportion. This unidirectional flow weakened British monetary reserves and became a strategic anomaly that the empire, already engaged in global expansion, was not willing to sustain indefinitely.
The British Empire, through the British East India Company, initiated a strategy to reverse the unfavorable trade balance. It cultivated opium in British India and introduced it illegally into China via private traders supported by imperial diplomacy. Thus, silver that once flowed into China now left it, and opium shifted from a marginal commodity to a structural element in the informal economy of the empire.
By 1839, British opium exports to China exceeded 1,400 tons annually. Addiction spread across all social classes. The Qing state, facing a health and moral crisis, tried to halt the inflow of opium. The British response was war. The First Opium War (1839–1842) ended with the Treaty of Nanking, which forced open ports, legalized opium, demanded indemnities, and ceded Hong Kong. Other similar treaties followed.
The consequences were devastating. The economy was dismantled, the artisanal industry collapsed, and the social fabric was damaged by the spread of addiction. By 1880, British opium exports exceeded 6,500 tons a year. It is estimated that nearly 27% of the adult male population was addicted to opium by the end of the 19th century. China, once a civilizational center, became an intervened economy and a fragmented territory. Opium was not just a commodity: it was the silent architecture of a structural surrender.
The effective prohibition of opium did not occur until the consolidation of power by the Communist Party of China in 1949. It was one of the new regime’s first symbolic moves, signaling the end of subjugation and the start of a sovereign reconstruction project. The Party presented itself not only as the victor of a civil war, but as the political actor that would put an end to over a century of foreign humiliations.
This narrative was built around the concept of the “century of humiliation” (1839–1949), a historical and emotional category structuring modern collective memory. The Opium Wars, unequal treaties, Japanese invasion, and loss of territories are read as a chain of dispossessions, against which the foundation of the People’s Republic is not merely a political response, but an existential reparation.
This narrative is institutionalized: it is taught in schools, commemorated on national dates, embedded in museums, textbooks, and state speeches. It also permeates popular culture: films, series, novels, and video games recreate episodes of occupation and resistance. The message is clear: humiliation was not the end, but the origin of a new national consciousness.
Trump’s Tariffs as a Mirror: Where the West Loses Meaning, China Finds Reaffirmation
In 2025, when Donald Trump’s administration imposes a new wave of tariffs—not only against China but also against historic allies such as Germany, Japan, or France—it is not simply a trade agreement that breaks down in the West, but the foundational narrative of liberal capitalism, sustained since the postwar era on axioms like free trade, open markets, the neutrality of economics in the face of politics, and interdependence as a global ordering principle.
The use of protectionism as a strategic weapon against allies breaks the logic of mutual benefit and exposes a rift between proclaimed principles and the real exercise of power. For Europe and other traditional U.S. partners, tariffs mean more than economic loss: they represent a symbolic blow. The guarantor of the liberal order no longer guarantees it. The market no longer appears as a neutral space: it becomes a battlefield.
For China, on the other hand, the same gesture acts as confirmation. The Communist Party does not conceive of the market as an autonomous entity, but as a tool of the state. Since 1949, the Chinese model has mixed state planning, selective protection, and controlled opening. Reforms do not aim to surrender to world order, but to integrate without relinquishing control over strategic decisions.
The "Made in China 2025" plan, launched over a decade ago to reduce technological dependence and lead key sectors, is already achieving more than 86% of its goals, consolidating China as a world leader in high-speed trains, batteries, solar panels, robotics, and electric vehicles. Sanctions do not weaken this policy: they accelerate it. Decoupling does not come as a surprise to China: it is part of its core hypothesis. What is experienced as a crisis in the West is lived as validation in China.
The Chinese narrative is not weakened by conflict: it is reaffirmed as the expression of a sustained historical coherence. In the 19th century, a foreign power used trade to undermine its sovereignty; today, faced with new forms of economic pressure, China does not experience rupture, but reaffirms the foundations it has cultivated consistently for over seven decades. These foundations are not only strategic, but also historical, cultural, and moral, structuring its national project since 1949. While in the West tariffs open a rift between the founding principles of free trade and the real exercise of power, in China they serve as confirmation of a worldview that never dissociates economy from politics, sovereignty from development. In this interpretative asymmetry, not only do two models confront each other; two distinct horizons are also revealed: between those who experience a breaking point and those who see in conflict confirmation of their continuity and rise.