Xi scrambles for SE Asian foothold as US tariffs mount, Plus China threatens ‘resolute countermeasures’ against US businesses -- China Boss News 4.04.25

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What happened?

Chinese President Xi Jinping is preparing for his first international trip of the year, with planned visits to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia.

According to diplomatic sources cited by the South China Morning Post, his Southeast Asian circuit signals more than routine diplomacy—it's a strategic move in Beijing's broader geopolitical pivot toward the Global South.

At last week's Boao Forum in Hainan—Asia's Davos—China's sixth-ranking official, Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang, delivered a clear message: the United States is now too unpredictable to anchor regional growth.

But Beijing is building new foundations—deeper trade with low- and middle-income countries and intensified regional cooperation, or so the narrative goes.

In Southeast Asia, Xi will seek to shore up Chinese manufacturing positions with commitments from countries who will also align themselves with Beijing's pushback against Trump. That's why he's going in person.

Dylan Loh, assistant foreign policy professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, told news staff that '"Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia were all 'natural places that [Xi] would want to visit.'"

They are important partners, "both in the context of US-China relations and with courting Asean more generally," he said.

Why it matters

Decouple-and-dominate

Unlike Trump, China isn't blowing up globalization. Yet.

And it may not ever, especially if it can rewire the global trade grid to insert itself as the primary power source.

But first, protection. It may surprise some, but US-China decoupling didn't start with US post-pandemic policies.

Beijing has been quietly decoupling from the United States since at least 2018 when the first shots of the trade war gave China both motive and cover.

Since then, decoupling has deepened—expanding from tariffs into finance, technology, ideology, and statecraft.

Still, what we're seeing now is rerouting, not unplugging.

Tech sovereignty, dollar-proofing, and a revved-up Belt-and-Road

Beijing's decoupling playbook is now familiar but no less ambitious: replace reliance with resilience.

In tech, that means constructing self-sufficient ecosystems in AI, cloud computing, and quantum, with censorship-resilient alternatives to Western platforms.

In finance, it means hedging against dollar-based vulnerabilities through CIPS - China's state-backed Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, designed to clear and settle cross-border transactions in renminbi (RMB) to support the international expansion of China's currency.

The Belt and Road Initiative—once synonymous with ports and pipelines—now includes telecoms, surveillance infrastructure, fintech, and e-commerce platforms like Temu and TikTok. China calls the latest exports the Digital Silk Road, and they carry more than data; they carry measurable megawatts of soft and hard power.

Dual circulation

But at the heart of Xi's decouple-and-dominate strategy is "dual circulation"—a clunky term for an intricate economic doctrine.

The idea is to fuel China's economy with two engines: internal circulation (domestic consumption, innovation, and supply chain sovereignty) and external circulation (sustained global trade, but on China's preferred terms).

It's a break from Deng-era dreams of seamless global integration.

Today, Xi wants global markets to serve national priorities, not the reverse.

Still, China is building autonomy without withdrawing. It wants global leadership, but on terms that reflect its worldview, not Washington's.

And that's more than enough of the problem.

In 2020, a fascinating debate occurred between well-known China watchers at the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge University. The topic was whether China poses a moral hazard to the world in light of its role in the origins of and suppression of information about COVID-19.

K.C. Lin, Deputy Director of the Centre, argued that China consistently exports risk. He accused Beijing of exploiting weak global governance and creating parallel systems that serve its national interests. According to Lin, China poses as a "responsible stakeholder" while actively undermining global public goods like health and security.

Steve Tsang of the SOAS China Institute agreed but shifted the blame toward Western democracies, criticizing them for treating China as they wish it to be rather than what it is. Distilled to its essence, Tsang's argument suggested that China had been egregiously enabled.

Similarly, William Hurst of Northwestern University pointed to the failures of US, UK, and EU leadership, arguing that their inaction has allowed China to shift institutions toward its own interests.

Predator and prey

Unlike liberal democracies, China lacks institutional checks and balances.

But without independent judicial power, personal security is precarious, and deterrence of bad acts elusive. This turns much of what Westerners assume about social order on its head.

In China, the choice for ambitious individuals is often binary: predator or prey.

And it's not just the billion-plus population creating pressure. As China exports its industrial surplus abroad, its vast, hyper-competitive elite—possibly many millions strong—is also looking outward, chasing influence, status, and spoils.

These aren't cautious bureaucrats or helpless lackeys. Among them you will find plenty of functional sociopaths, shaped by a 5,000-year political culture where power is seized, not shared—and where meekness invites elimination.

Said differently, the dysfunction is systemic, and the chances of reform bled out in 1989 on Tiananmen Square’s cement slabs.

That's not to say morally good people don't currently exist in China. On the contrary, most Chinese remain untouched only because they own little and exist in a neo-feudal relationship with Chinese Communist Party lords who reign supreme over resources.

If the majority were relevant, things would be quite different. But in totalitarian systems, the state need only protect itself - which is synonymous with elite interests.

And that's where mirror-imaging China fails - by overlooking the implications of unrestrained tyranny. It’s a different kind of moral hazard—but one that, like Covid, spreads quickly.

That's why Xi’s in-the-flesh tour of Southeast Asia is more than symbolic. It's a claim on what the emperor thinks is rightfully his.

Cambodia now hosts a Chinese-backed naval base. In Vietnam and Malaysia, China is pitching itself as the steady hand amid America’s erratic leadership.

At Boao, Chinese officials doubled down on "economic resilience"—promoting themselves as a backstop for all of Asia.

In sum, Trump's tariff fanaticism paves the way for the Chinese elite to proceed as they will - in Latin American infrastructure deals, African military cooperation, European tech platforms, UN diplomatic forums, and Myanmar disaster relief efforts.

Xi is betting that in this new world, dominance stems from presence—not spectacle—that while America sabers the air with tariffs, China can bind the periphery to its core, turning crises into contracts, and nervous states into clients.

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