In Vivid Video, Beijing Vows Not to ‘Kneel Down’ to Washingtonr
Updated April 29, 2025
China signaled its resolve to stand up to President Trump’s efforts to pressure Beijing into a settlement on trade, vowing in a social-media video to “never kneel down” before U.S. coercion—and urging other countries to also resist.
In a video posted Tuesday, with a version narrated in Chinese and another in English, the Chinese Foreign Ministry denounced what it characterized as bullying tactics designed to shore up American hegemony and conveyed a feisty message that Beijing won’t back down from a trade standoff with Washington.
Titled “Never Kneel Down!” and posted on social-media platforms including Weibo and X, the video criticized Trump’s move earlier in April to declare a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for all trading partners except China, just days after announcing them. The narration described the pause as a game designed to force countries to limit trade with Beijing.
“This is just likely the deadly trap of ‘the eye of the storm,’” the narration said over dramatic footage of lightning storms. The video also appealed to other countries to defy American pressure, saying, “When the rest of the world stands together in solidarity, the U.S. is just a small, stranded boat.”
The video comes as President Trump has struck a softer tone on trade tensions with China in recent days, fueling some optimism that the two governments could start hashing out a potential deal.
Beijing has responded to Trump’s tariffs by slapping 125% levies on American goods in retaliation to the U.S.’s 145% tariffs on Chinese products. Chinese officials have signaled a willingness to negotiate but not under duress, and it remains unclear if any progress is being made.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry video came after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that the onus was on Beijing to defuse trade tensions.
“I believe that it’s up to China to de-escalate, because they sell five times more to us than we sell to them,” Bessent told CNBC, calling the tariffs unsustainable.
Tuesday’s video, however, suggests that Beijing isn’t prepared to blink first in the trade standoff. “Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst,” the narration said, citing what it described as past U.S. successes in extracting trade and industrial concessions from Japan and France. “All bullies are just paper tigers.”
The video hammered home its arguments with footage that appeared to depict the 1950-1953 Korean War, known in China as the “War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.”
It also showed the moment in 2021 when Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies, returned home by plane from Canada nearly three years after she was arrested in Vancouver on the behalf of U.S. prosecutors who had filed bank-fraud charges against her. Beijing had denounced the case as U.S. coercion and celebrated Meng’s return—through a prisoner swap for two detained Canadians—as a national triumph for China.
“History has proven compromise won’t earn you mercy—kneeling only invites more bullying,” the video said. “For China, for the world, we must rise and fight on.”
Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com