In vivid video, Beijing vows not to ‘kneel down’ to Washington

In a powerful video, China’s foreign ministry denounces Washington as a paper tiger over its tariffs tactics and calls on other countries to isolate the US as a ‘small, stranded boat’.

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: AFP

China signalled 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 US 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 characterised 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 criticised 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 US is just a small, stranded boat.”

Never Kneel Down! pic.twitter.com/z8FU3rMSBA

— CHINA MFA Spokesperson 中国外交部发言人 (@MFA_China) April 29, 2025

The video comes as President Trump has struck a softer tone on trade tensions with China in recent days, fuelling some optimism that the two governments could start hashing out a potential deal.

Beijing has responded to Trump’s tariffs by slapping 125 per cent levies on American goods in retaliation to the US’s 145 per cent tariffs on Chinese products. Chinese officials have signalled 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 US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that the onus was on Beijing to defuse trade tensions.

Screenshot of the video. Photo: China Ministry of Foreign Affairs

“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 US 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 US 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 US prosecutors who had filed bank-fraud charges against her. Beijing had denounced the case as US 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.”

Wall Street Journal