Can the CCP Outlast Trump, or Will Millions Starve?

The most significant event in the world right now might be the tariff war initiated by United States President Donald Trump. This trade war has only just begun, but people have already realized that it is primarily a showdown between America and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It could also be a decisive battle that determines whether the communist regime can continue to exist. 

What are the prospects of this war? Will China face a situation like North Korea, where large numbers of people starve to death? 

CCP Unveils Six-Point Strike Against Trump's Tariffs

So far, in the face of Trump's tariff war, the only entity that has responded with extreme toughness is the CCP. The CCP's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated, "If the US insists on waging a tariff war or trade war, China will definitely fight to the end." 

Apart from the 84% tariffs the CCP imposed on US goods, on April 8, a WeChat public account believed to belong to the CCP's official media, Xinhua News Agency, published an article on the topic. It claimed that in response to Trump's high tariffs, the CCP has prepared at least six major countermeasures:  

1. Significantly increasing tariffs on American soybeans, sorghum, and other agricultural products.  
2. Banning the export of American poultry to China.  
3. Suspending US-China cooperation on combating fentanyl.  
4. Implementing countermeasures in the service trade sector, including restricting American companies from participating in procurement and limiting their legal consulting and other business cooperation.  
5. Banning the import of American films.  
6. Investigating the intellectual property profits of American companies in China. Given the huge monopoly profits these companies have gained in China, relevant CCP authorities are studying the launch of investigations into these matters.

The CCP's Misjudgment and Remaining Options

Clearly, the CCP has once again made a major misjudgment. They underestimated Trump's determination and the speed of his actions while stubbornly refusing to show any signs of compromise to save face. 

But has the CCP truly run out of cards to play? I believe the CCP still has two cards left. 

Externally, it might attempt to escape its predicament by initiating a war. 

Recently, the CCP made a high-profile announcement about the establishment of its second overseas military base. Located within Cambodian territory on the Gulf of Thailand, this base holds a decisive influence over the Strait of Malacca. It enhances the CCP's influence in the Indian Ocean and represents a major advance in the CCP's strategic positioning in Southeast Asia.

According to the CCP's Ministry of National Defense, this base is primarily intended for joint training and regional counterterrorism exercises with the Cambodian military. Known as the Yunxiang Base, it is a strategic stronghold on the Indochina Peninsula. From here, it can provide security for Chinese vessels navigating to and from the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific.

The Yunxiang base had previously been kept under wraps, with no public announcements. It was only after Trump announced "reciprocal tariffs" that the CCP made a high-profile announcement on April 5. The political significance is self-evident. 

With Yunxiang, Filling a Strategic Gap

In the past, the CCP only had one overseas military base in Djibouti. Now, with the addition of the Yunxiang base, the CCP has military bases at two opposite points in the Western and Eastern Indian Oceans, filling a strategic gap for the People's Liberation Army in the Indian Ocean. 

Satellite imagery analysis shows that the core area of the Yunxiang base has a 650-meter deep-water dock, which has previously accommodated Type 071 amphibious dock landing ships. 

In the future, it could accommodate 10,000-ton destroyers and, notably, a 350-meter pier capable of docking the 80,000-ton aircraft carrier Fujian.

 Of course, the CCP's threats toward Taiwan have never ceased.

The CCP's Second Card: Sacrificing the Chinese People

The CCP's second card, of course, is to sacrifice the Chinese people. The CCP could implement a nationwide suppression model, curbing the demands of the populace through a rationing system to see who can outlast the other — China or the US 

If the CCP can endure Trump's four-year term, or the less-than-two-year period before the midterm elections, while the American public, unwilling to bear the pain brought by the tariff war, votes against Trump in the next midterm and general elections, the CCP might still have a chance. 

North Korea experienced a great famine from 1994 to 1998, resulting in hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths due to starvation or disease. North Korea called it the "Arduous March," which was caused by the loss of economic aid after the Soviet Union's collapse, combined with consecutive years of natural disasters. 

If Chinese society also falls into turmoil, how many people might starve to death? 

A Chinese economist stated that it could be as much as half the population! 

There are two reasons for this. 

First, China cannot achieve food self-sufficiency with a food import dependency rate of about 20%. 

Second, modern agricultural production heavily relies on a complex industrial and logistics system, meaning it depends on the order of industrial production. Once that order collapses, agricultural production will collapse as well.

China's Growing Dependence on Food Imports

Let us now examine these two reasons in greater detail.

 First, China's dependency on imported food. 

From historical Chinese grain data, we can see that China's food import dependency was 11.2% in 2011, rising to 23.4% by 2023, and slightly dropping to 22.4% in 2024, showing a clear upward trend. 

China is now the world's largest grain importer, with soybeans at the top. 

In 2024, China imported 157.53 million tons of grain, of which soybeans accounted for 105.03 million tons, making up 66.7%. 

Of the 157.53 million tons of imported grain, 31.79 million tons, or 20%, came from the US 

Of the soybeans, 22.13 million tons were imported from the US, accounting for 21% of total soybean imports. 

Soybeans are a treasure. They can be used to extract oil, and the leftover soybean meal can serve as crucial feed. 

In other words, while soybeans are not directly consumed by Chinese people, they provide an important supplement to the Chinese diet. Halting soybean imports would create a calorie gap that simply cannot be filled. 

Land in Agricultural Production

China's domestic soybean production averages about 150 kilograms per mu (a Chinese unit where one mu is about 0.4 acres). It is mainly grown in the northern regions, with only one planting season annually. 

To stop soybean imports and make up for the roughly 100 million-ton production shortfall, an additional 700 million mu (280 million acres) of land would be needed to grow soybeans. 

What does this mean? The Chinese government has long aimed to maintain 1.8 billion mu (720 million acres) of total arable land. This is the so-called "red line" for farmland, and every year, thousands of people are arrested for destroying any part of it. However, allocating 700 million mu from the existing 1.8 billion mu to grow soybeans is nothing short of a pipe dream. 

Oil and Sugar Imports

Even such massive soybean imports for oil extraction fall far short of meeting China's demand for vegetable oil, forcing large-scale imports. 

In 2011, China's vegetable oil import dependency was 15.2%. It rose to 24.1% by 2023. The gap absolutely cannot be filled by relying on China's own agricultural production. 

Another more direct statistic: China's sugar import dependency has long remained around 30%. This supply gap is even less likely to be filled. 

In summary, in the food sector, China is in a state of pure import dependency. If China's economy collapses or conflicts break out with foreign countries and important agricultural import channels are cut off, the calorie gap will certainly exceed 20%. 

This means that, solely due to halted imports, up to 20% of the Chinese population could die from starvation.

But this is merely the first level of risk — the second is even more devastating.

Modern agriculture is entirely inseparable from industrial production. It relies on a full industrial chain encompassing chemical fertilizers, pesticides, agricultural films, fuel, diesel engines, machinery, irrigation systems, transportation, logistics, warehousing, and even financial insurance.

Even if China were to have sufficient arable land, a breakdown in this industrial chain would still render it incapable of sustaining basic agricultural production.

In 2008, during the Wenchuan earthquake, a widespread gasoline shortage occurred in Chengdu. At that time, in the nearby suburban areas, the ripe wheat needed harvesting. However, because there was no diesel fuel available, many farmers were unable to start their combine harvesters. That year, a large portion of the wheat crops rotted in the fields.

Chemical Fertilizers: The Linchpin of China's Crop Yields

Let's take chemical fertilizers as another example.

Chinese farmers have an extremely high dependence on chemical fertilizers. One could say that without fertilizers, they simply don't know how to farm.

According to long-term sampling surveys conducted by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, the pure domestic consumption of chemical fertilizer was:

• 12.69 million tons in 1980,
• 25.9 million tons in 1990,
• 41.46 million tons in 2000.

In other words, by the start of the 21st century, China had already become the world's largest consumer of chemical fertilizers.

For comparison, the United States, as the world's largest agricultural exporter, has maintained an annual fertilizer use of around 20 million tons.

China's usage has continued to soar:

• 55.61 million tons by 2010,
• 60.23 million tons by 2015 — reaching its peak.

This marked the ceiling of China's fertilizer consumption.

Subsequently, with the aging and gradual passing of older generations of farmers, younger generations showed little interest in agriculture. While still registered as rural residents, most of them lack even basic farming skills. They cannot tell seedlings apart from weeds.

As a result, widespread farmland abandonment began.

China's top grain-producing regions — Henan, Hubei, and Hunan in the central area and the northeastern provinces — have all had abandonment rates exceeding 20%.

Consequently, fertilizer usage has begun to decline slowly:

• 52.5 million tons in 2020,
  
• and further down to 50.72 million tons in 2023.
  

Even so, China remains the world's largest fertilizer consumer.

The Agricultural Supply Chain 

Behind these 50 million tons per year lies an intricate and stable system of production, transport, and distribution. It is dependent on a reliable industrial supply chain, market structure, and logistical network.

Should the economy collapse and social order break down, any disruption in this chain would mean that these 50 million tons of fertilizers could no longer reach the hands of farmers, would no longer be applied to the fields, and would no longer be converted into crop yields. Inevitably, this would result in a sharp drop in food production.

Loss of Agricultural Skills

China's younger generation has already lost traditional agricultural production skills. Even if they could relearn these skills through platforms like Douyin, in a scenario of social order collapse, they would be forced to rely on small-scale, individual household production. 

Without high-quality seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, or agricultural machinery, and relying entirely on manual labor, maintaining even a quarter of agricultural output in such conditions would be a miracle.

A Historic Turning Point

At this point, it should be clear: China's food import dependency already exceeds 20%, with no possibility of achieving self-sufficiency. 

Even more troubling is that global food supplies are already in a tight balance, with little surplus. If China's social order collapses and large-scale famine breaks out, Western countries would not have much grain to spare to support China. 

Therefore, the conclusion is that if China's economy collapses and social order breaks down, and large-scale famine would inevitably erupt. The resulting calorie supply gap potentially exceeds 80%. 

It is precisely based on this data analysis that the Chinese economist asserted that, even in the most optimistic scenario, half of China's population might starve to death.

In short, we are witnessing and living through a major historical turning point. What will happen next? No one knows.

All we can do now is wait and see.

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Author: Jennifer Zeng