Peking Playbook Unscripted 20250406

Hello! Welcome to the 7th episode of the podcast “Peking Playbook,” mainly featuring me (Zichen Wang) and Robert Wu of Baiguan and China Translated substacks, just talking about recent news. Today, we have Johnny Zou of East8 join us as well. Johnny was with us on the January 28 episode.

In the following 43-minute conversation recorded on Sunday morning ET, April 6, 2025, we talked about:

[00:46] Tariff, first impressions

[09:46] Is the US underestimating China?

[15:00] How would countries from Japan to Vietnam respond?

[22:44] Will China have closer integration with the rest of the world or more trade friction?

[29:27] Investment strategy post-”Liberation Day”

[35:48] How will this affect China’s domestic demand

[40:02] Zichen: shoutout to a Pekingnology piece on some science reporting in SCMP

[40:54] Johnny: We shouldn’t ignore RCEP, which could be important for this tariff war

April 7 People's Daily on responses to US tariffs 集中精力办好自己的事 增强有效应对美关税冲击的信心

Henry Huiyao Wang on "Liberation Day" tariffs

Yao Yang says Chinese companies will invest massively abroad