Gordon Chang: Tariff War Couldn't Have Come At A Worse Time For Xi

"Xi Jinping is willing to impose that pain, but I'm not so sure that the Chinese people are willing to accept it. You know, before those tariff wars, the Chinese call it, you saw extreme disillusionment throughout Chinese society. You know, all those Chinese migrants coming across our southern border, that really is a symptom of people just giving up on their own country. Right now, there are factories that are closing in southern China, which is the export sector.
People are forced to go back to their farms. This is a really bad story for China, where the economy is probably already contracting. It's not growing at the 5.4 percent that they claim for the first quarter.
We see from price data from February and March that the country is in a deflationary spiral. That's a very bad signal for China right now. And the tariff war couldn't come at a worse time for Xi Jinping."