[Jimbuna]

'We don't care': A defiant China looks beyond Trump's America

"We don't care about sales to the United States," says Hu Tianqiang as one of his toy fighter jets flies past our heads.

It's hard to hear him above the buzzing toy planes and miniature drones, an almost rhythmic backdrop to the cacophony of toys that surround him, all clamouring for the attention of buyers.

Hu's stall, Zhongxiang Toys, sits inside the world's biggest wholesale market in the small Chinese city of Yiwu.

It's a huge showroom of more than 75,000 shops where buyers come seeking just about everything, from twinkling Christmas lights and kitchenware to umbrellas and massage guns. It can take most of the day just to get around one department given each of them has an airport hangar's worth of goods on show.

Yiwu is in the province of Zhejiang, along China's eastern coast. The manufacturing and export hub, home to more than 30 ports, accounted for 17% of all Chinese sales to the US last year.

That puts Yiwu, and this region, at the frontline of the US-China trade war.

Mr Hu, too, is on the frontline. He sits among rows of snazzy toy jets, squeaking dogs, fluffy stuffed animals, barbies and motorcycle-riding spidermen – a sliver of the $34bn (£25bn) worth of toys China exported in 2024.

About $10bn of it went to the US. But now, these Chinese exports to America face up to 245% tariffs. And US President Donald Trump has made it clear that he blames Beijing in particular for cornering too much of the global market.

But things have changed here since Trump's first trade war against China, which kicked off in 2018. It taught Yiwu a lesson, summed up by Mr Hu: "Other countries have money too!"

That defiance has become a familiar theme in the world's second-biggest economy, which is bracing itself for another turbulent Trump presidency.

Beijing, which has been repeatedly telling the world that the US was bullying countries into trade negotiations, has not backed down yet from the trade war.

The propaganda online has ratcheted up, applauding Chinese innovation and diplomacy in contrast to the uncertainty unleashed by Trump. On the country's highly controlled social media, there are plenty of posts echoing the leadership's promise that China will keep fighting.

And in factories and markets, businessmen and exporters now say they have other alternatives, beyond Trump's America. Mr Hu, for instance, says around 20%-30% of his business came from US buyers. But not anymore.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy7jdn09lxo