China's President Xi is in trouble the longer these talks drag on: Michael Pillsbury
Trade talks between China and the United States will likely go past the original March 1st deadline, but Hudson Institute China strategist Michael Pillsbury says that's more of a problem for Chinese President Xi Jinping than it is for President Trump.
"President Xi is in trouble the longer these talks drag on, and I think a lot of us here in Washington have noticed that," he told FOX Business' Stuart Varney on Tuesday.
Pillsbury said China's Communist Party relies more on economic expansion than on equality among its citizens. Several socioeconomic factors are affecting the country's GDP, causing some citizens to lose faith in their government.
"The peasant revolts tend not to contact each other, so you can have a strike of several thousand people in one province, but they don't do anything about their colleagues a thousand miles away," Pillsbury explained on "Varney & Co." "Where that starts to become very dangerous to China is if strikes and revolts of peasants link up and begin to challenge the party and come out in the streets."
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Pillsbury said trade hawks who want to preserve the Communist Party will continue to advocate for the status quo in China but as trade talks linger, the Chinese government may have to make more concessions to the U.S. He is optimistic that the two countries will reach an equally beneficial deal.