When Trump became president and started attacking China for enjoying a trade surplus with the United States that hit $375 billion last year, Beijing didn’t think he was really serious, said Paul Haenle, a former China adviser on the Bush and Obama national security councils and now director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing.

“Early on, the Chinese had a very simple narrative that all this trade stuff was about Trump's short-term political objectives, about getting a tweetable victory,” he said. “Now, they’re at the other end of the spectrum. Now it’s all about the U.S. trying to block China’s rise.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4086048&forum_id=2#36877486)