China played the long game to see who 'blinks first' when 2018 US trade war spiralled out of control, central bank's ex-adviser says
2019-03-26 10:10:04 source：South China Morning Post
March 26, 2019
China’s government, locked in disputes with the nation’s biggest export market, was playing the long game and waiting to see who “blinks first” when a trade war between the world’s two largest economies spiralled out of control last year, a former adviser to the Chinese central bank said.
Negotiations to resolve the disputes went into a six-month hiatus due to several false starts caused by lack of understanding, said Tsinghua University’s economics professor David Li Daokui, a former member of the monetary policy committee of the People’s Bank of China.
“China was patient, and was not eager to reach a deal in [the period between] May and November” last year, Li said at Credit Suisse’s Asia Investment Conference in Hong Kong, recounting a December 2018 phone call with the Chinese head of state Xi Jinping. “Let’s see who blinks first,” he recalled Xi as saying.
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