Old Xi Jinping speech resurfaces amid US trade war

"President Xi Jinping announced 180% tariffs on US imports, effective tomorrow," reads a post shared April 9, 2025 on X.

It features a minute-long clip where Xi is heard saying in Mandarin: "The Chinese economy is an ocean, not a small pond. The ocean has calm times and stormy times. Without storms, it would not be an ocean."

He adds: "Storms can overturn a small pond, but they cannot overturn the ocean. After countless storms, the ocean is still there! After more than 5,000 years of hardships, China is still here! Looking to the future, China will always be here!"

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Screenshot of the false X post, taken on April 11, 2025

Markets have been on a rollercoaster ride since Trump announced sweeping global tariffs on April 2 which he abruptly paused for most countries a week after (archived link).

But the US president upped the ante on a brutal trade war with superpower rival China, raising tariffs to 125 percent.

China has so far hit back with retaliatory levies of 84 percent on US imports, which came into effect just after midday (0401 GMT) on April 10.

China's commerce ministry warned the tariffs risked "severely" impacting the global economy, but stressed that "the door to dialogue is open".

"We hope the US will meet China halfway, and, based on the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, properly resolve differences through dialogue and consultation," Commerce Ministry spokeswoman He Yongqian said the same day.

Similar Thai and English posts shared the video of Xi speaking as recent -- but it dates back to 2018 and shows the Chinese leader's response to Trump's trade war during his first term as US president.

Keyword searches found the video was republished by Chinese state media People's Daily on April 7, 2025, days after Trump first announced the global tariffs (archived link). 

The video's description states Xi once described China's economy as a "wide ocean" that could weather economic downturn.

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Screenshot comparison between the false X post (L) and the video republished by Chinese state media People's Daily on April 7, 2025

Towards the end of the video shared in the false posts, AFP spotted superimposed text which indicates that the Chinese president's address was made on November 5, 2018 -- 10 months into the ongoing trade conflict between Beijing and Washington.

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Screenshot of the video in the false posts, with the overlaid date highlighted

Keyword searches on Google led to a report from Chinese government-run outlet The Paper on November 5, 2018, with a video of Xi announcing the inauguration of the China International Import Expo (archived link).

AFP also found Xi's script for the event that day published by state-run Xinhua news agency, in which a part matches his remarks in the video (archived link).

He does not mention increasing tariffs on the United States at any point in the speech. 

Xi instead pledged to widen access to China's economy and delivered a veiled rebuke of Trumpism (archived link).

Nations "should not just point fingers at others to gloss over their own problems", Xi said, decrying "protectionism", "isolationism" and "the law of the jungle".