'Confident' China touts poverty alleviation efforts amid trade war with the U.S.

Beijing's confidence about resisting U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs belies concern about China's structural imbalances and slowing economic growth.

MALIPO, China — The rural villages of Malipo are a world away from gleaming Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai, reached by narrow roads that sometimes skirt dangerously close to deep ravines. Schoolchildren eat simple breakfasts while squatting on sidewalks, and even a local official complained that the remote mountain villages lacked access to the latest 5G internet connection.

But Chinese officials point to overall progress in this thickly forested, highly mountainous border region in southwest China as a reason for their “confidence” in the country’s development model, and in its ability to weather any trade war with the United States.

“We have full confidence and the capability to overcome all difficulties,” Vice Foreign Minister Hua Chunying said last week during a government-sponsored trip to the rural county of Malipo in Yunnan province, on the border with Vietnam.

“As for what the United States is doing, we really don’t want any kind of war, but if we have to face up to reality, then we have no fear at all,” she told reporters at a middle school. “The ordinary people already feel the suffering from the tariff war, so I really hope the [U.S.] administration will come back to normal.”

Hua was speaking before the U.S. and China agreed to slash tariffs on each other’s imports in what Beijing said showed the effectiveness of its resistance against President Donald Trump’s tariff “bullying.”