The Chinese Communist Party uses cease-fires not to negotiate in earnest but to gain vital breathing space and improve its position. Trade negotiations are no different - from WTO promises to today’s fentanyl or domestic consumption assurances.

This strategy is imprinted from the Party’s earliest battles in the civil war. And see this example from the Korean War:

“Facing a major deficit of warm clothes, food, and other critical supplies, these soldiers started deserting en masse, to the extent that Chinese commander Peng had to rely on tightening the border and augmenting his corps of political commissars who were tasked with prosecuting stray troops. What really saved the Communists was the time that the armistice talks bought them to regroup, augment supply lines, and dig in across the peninsula. In an echo of its Civil War strategy, the CCP used cease-fires not to negotiate in earnest but rather to gain vital breathing space and improve its position. If the U.S. side appreciated that this was the Communists’ strategy, it did not do anything to counter it. The war dragged on for two more years, and to this day the CCP boasts of having fought the United States to a draw.”

-CCP Weapons of Mass Persuasion, The Andrew W. Marshall Papers, by Jacqueline Deal and Eleanor Harvey, December 2022.