https://www.city-journal.org/html/why-china-cant-afford-trade-war-15951.html
China and the United States have agreed not to impose tariffs on one another—that is, not to engage in a trade war—at least while they negotiate a trade settlement. If the White House is to be believed, China has agreed to increase “significantly” its purchases of American goods, especially agricultural products. This is welcome news: China-U.S. trade, for all the restrictions and conditions placed on it (mostly by Beijing), reflects an economically symbiotic relationship. A trade war would damage both countries. But Chinese concessions up front are also significant because tacitly they acknowledge weakness, even as China tries to present an image of trading dominance.
Beijing’s clearest difficulty lies in its export-oriented growth model, which many in the West erroneously see as a strength. Because China overemphasizes manufacturing, it produces surpluses that get wasted unless its state-owned firms can sell them. Without buyers, stacks of rebar, jet engines, and the like will rust in factory yards, and iPhones and millions of team-logo t-shirts pose a storage problem. The structure depends on prosperity elsewhere to absorb Chinese products. Reports on China’s recent economic growth surge underscore this dependency: even China’s own statistical bureau pointed to the acceleration of growth in the United States and Europe as the cause of its spurt.
Observers who fear Chinese manufacturing capacity point to the West’s vulnerability in this area. Because the United States and other developed economies have lost so much productive power to China, they would face shortages should Beijing decide to withhold supplies. Chinese refusal to export its products would hurt the West, perhaps even precipitating a recession, but inflicting this pain would come at great cost to China. Its export-oriented manufacturing would stagnate, and so, accordingly, would its export-dependent economy. Socially, China would suffer as well. Beijing fears a recurrence of the riots that rocked the nation during the great recession of 2008-09.