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Grammar , Vocabulary

Useful Chinese Essay Phrases  

  July 8, 2020

By   Ellen

Nowadays, many international students have decided to study abroad, and China has become a highly popular destination. In universities, essay writing is a basic skill and the “Academic Writing” lectures are always attracting many students to attend.

Here we have summarized some “all-purpose” phrases and sentences which hopefully you would find useful.

Chinese Essay Phrases Used in Abstracts

The abstract should explain the purpose, method, results, and conclusion of your research, also highlighting the new ideas that you proposed; and do remember to keep your language concise while writing. The purpose of the abstract is to conclude and summarize the main contents of your essay so that the reader could have a brief understanding without having to read the entire paper. Chinese abstracts are usually around 200 characters.

Research Background, Significance, and Current Situation

Extremely useful/badly needed/affecting people’s lives (1-2 sentences)

Proposing the Object of Study 

Played a very important role (1-2 sentences)

Purpose of the Study or Study Aim

The role of A in B, perhaps remains to be seen (1 sentence)

Research Methods and Results

Through what means/technique/experiment we achieved what result (several sentences)

Research Results

The phenomenon of A in B, shows what the function of B is, theoretical and applied value (1-2 sentences)

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Chinese Essay Phrases: Main Body

The main body includes the introduction and the main text. The introduction section could use similar phrases that we have just listed, focusing on research objects and purposes. The main text should include research methods, research results, and discussion. Writers should keep their sentences to the point and avoid rambling, also avoid using too much subjective perspective discourses, which shouldn’t be used as arguments as well.

Theoretical Basis, Approaches, and Methods

To express opinions, to emphasis, transitional expressions, chinese essay phrases: conclusion.

At the ending section of the paper, the writer should provide an objective summary, list out the future research objectives and directions, and perhaps look into the future. Keep optimistic even if your experiment results were negative.

Research Impact and Value

There you go. We hope this article helps you write amazing essays. Best of luck!

Ellen is a language specialist from China. She grew up in the US and received a master’s degree from the St Andrews University of UK. The multicultural experiences attributes to her understanding of the differences and similarities between the English and Chinese language. She currently works as an editor specialized in Language learning books.

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How to Write a Chinese Essay

Dec 16, 2020 | Guest Blogs & Media

The more essays you write, the better you get at communicating with Chinese. To write a good essay, you first have to reach a high language mastery level.

Do you admire the students who write seamless Chinese essay? If you do, then you should know that you too can achieve this level of proficiency. In the meantime, don’t be afraid to pay for your essay if you cannot write it on your own. Online academic writers are a resource each student should take advantage of.

Here are tips to help you get better at writing essays in Chinese.

Learn New Chinese Words

The key to communicating in a new language is learning as many words as you can. Take it upon yourself to learn at least one Chinese word a day. Chinese words are to essay writing what bricks are to a building. The more words you have, the better you get at constructing meaningful sentences.

Case in point, if you’re going to write a Chinese sentence that constitutes ten words, but you don’t know the right way to spell three of those words, your sentence might end up not making sense.

During your Chinese learning experience, words are your arsenal and don’t forget to master the meaning of each word you learn.

Read Chinese Literature

Reading is the most effective way of learning a new language. Remember not to read for the sake of it; find out the meaning of each new word you encounter. When you are an avid reader of Chinese literature, nothing can stop you from writing fluent Chinese.

In the beginning, it might seem like you’re not making any progress, but after a while, you will notice how drastically your writing will change. Receiving information in Chinese helps your brain get accustomed to the language’s sentence patterns, and you can translate this to your essays.

Be extensive in your reading to ensure you get as much as possible out of each article. Remember that it’s not about how fast you finish an article, but rather, how much you gain from the exercise.

Translate Articles from your Native Language to Chinese

Have you ever thought about translating your favorite read to Chinese? This exercise might be tedious, but you will learn a lot from it. The art of translation allows you to seamlessly shift from one language’s sentence pattern into the other. The more you do this, the easier it will be for your brain to convert English sentences into Chinese phrases that people can comprehend.

You can always show your Chinese professor your translations for positive criticism. The more you get corrected, the better you will get at translation. Who knows, you might actually like being a translator once you graduate.

Final Thoughts

by Adrian Lomezzo

Adrian  Lomezzo is a freelance writer. Firstly, he has been developing as a content manager and working with different websites, and the main goal of his was to develop the content making it in the first place. Secondly,  Adrian  had a big desire to help students and adults in self-development in this field and teach them to improve their skills. As a lover of traveling, he did not want to be in one place, and became a writer who could be closer to everyone, and share precious information from the corners of the world.

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Improve Chinese Essay Writing- A Complete How to Guide

• Last updated: June 6, 2019
• Learn Chinese

Writing can reflect a writer’s power of thought and language organization skills. It is critical to master Chinese writing  if you want to take your Chinese to the next level. How to write good Chinese essays? The following six steps will improve Chinese essay writing:

Before You Learn to Improve Chinese Essay Writing

Before you can write a good essay in Chinese, you must first be accustomed with Chinese characters. Unlike English letters, Chinese characters are hieroglyphs, and the individual strokes are different from each other. It is important to be comfortable with writing Chinese characters in order to write essays well in Chinese. Make sure to use Chinese essay writing format properly. After that, you will be ready to improve Chinese essay writing.

Increase Your Chinese Words Vocabulary

With approximately 100,000 words in the Chinese language, you will need to learn several thousand words just to know the most common words used. It is essential to learn as many Chinese words as possible if you wish to be a good writer. How can you enlarge your vocabulary? Try to accumulate words by reading daily and monthly. Memory is also very necessary for expanding vocabulary. We should form a good habit of exercising and reciting as more as we can so that to enlarge vocabulary. Remember to use what you have learned when you write in Chinese so that you will continually be progressing in your language-learning efforts.

Acquire Grammar,Sentence Patterns and Function Words

In order to hone your Chinese writing skills , you must learn the grammar and sentence patterns. Grammar involves words, phrases, and the structure of the sentences you form. There are two different categories of Chinese words: functional and lexical. Chinese phrases can be categorized as subject-predicate phrases (SP), verb-object phrases (VO), and co-ordinate phrases (CO). Regarding sentence structure, each Chinese sentence includes predicate, object, subject, and adverbial attributes. In addition, function words play an important role in Chinese semantic understanding, so try to master the Chinese conjunction, such as conjunction、Adverbs、Preposition as much as you can. If you wish to become proficient at writing in Chinese, you must study all of the aspects of grammar mentioned in this section.

Keep a Diary Regularly to Note Down Chinese Words,Chinese Letters

Another thing that will aid you in becoming a better writer is keeping a journal in Chinese. Even if you are not interested in expanding your writing skills, you will find that it is beneficial for many day-to-day tasks, such as completing work reports or composing an email. Journaling on a regular basis will help you form the habit of writing, which will make it feel less like a chore. You may enjoy expressing yourself in various ways by writing; for instance, you might write poetry in your journal. On a more practical side of things, you might prefer to simply use your journal as a way to purposely build your vocabulary .

Persistence in Reading Everyday

In addition to expanding your view of the world and yourself, reading can help you improve your writing. Reading allows you to learn by example; if you read Chinese daily, you will find that it is easier to write in Chinese because you have a greater scope of what you can do with the vocabulary that you’ve learned. Choose one favorite Chinese reading , Read it for an hour or 2,000 words or so in length each day.

Whenever you come across words or phrases in your reading that you don’t understand, take the time to check them in your dictionary and solidify your understanding of them. In your notebook, write the new word or phrase and create an example sentence using that new addition to your vocabulary. If you are unsure how to use it in a sentence, you can simply copy the sample sentence in your dictionary.

Reviewing the new vocabulary word is a good way to improve your memory of it; do this often to become familiar with these new words. The content of reading can be very broad. It can be from novels, or newspapers, and it can be about subjects like economics or psychology. Remember you should read about things you are interested in. After a certain period of accumulation by reading, you will greatly improve your Chinese writing.

Do Essay Writing Exercise on a Variety of Subjects

As the saying goes, “practice makes perfect.” In order to improve your China Essay Writing , you should engage in a variety of writing exercises. For beginners, you should start with basic topics such as your favorite hobby, future plans, favorite vacation spot, or any other topic that you can write about without difficulty.

For example :《我的一天》( Wǒ de yì tiān, my whole day’s life  ),《我喜欢的食物》( Wǒ xǐhuan de shíwù, my favorite food  ),《一次难忘的旅行》( yí cì nánwàng de lǚxíng, an unforgettable trip  ) etc.

Generally the writing topics can be classified into these categories: a recount of an incident,a description of something/someone, a letter, formulate your own opinion on an issue based on some quote or picture etc.

Takeaway to Improve Chinese Essay Writing

Keep an excel spreadsheet of 口语(Kǒuyǔ, spoken Chinese) –书面语(Shūmiànyǔ, written Chinese) pairs and quotes of sentences that you like. You should also be marking up books and articles that you read looking for new ways of expressing ideas. Using Chinese-Chinese dictionaries is really good for learning how to describe things in Chinese.

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The Guide to Writing Your First Mandarin Essay

When you want to be able to make writing your first Mandarin essay nice and easy, it pays to put plenty of thought and effort into the preparation. As the old saying goes ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail.’ To give you plenty of food for thought we’ve put together everything you need to know to get things moving. All you need to do is work through the following steps, and you’ll be submitting your essay in no time at all.

Check you understand the basics

There are so many things you have to think about when writing an essay, particularly when it’s not in your native language. But as with any cognitively demanding task, the process for getting started is always the same. Check you understand the following basics and you’ll be heading in the right direction:

• Do you know what the question means?
• Have you made a note of the final submission date?
• Make sure you read some past examples to get a feel for what’s expected of you
• Do you understand the question that has been set?
• Do you know who you can talk to if you need advice along the way?
• Are there any restrictions on the dialect you should be aware of?

Once you can write the answers to the above down on a single side of the paper, you are ready to tackle the main part of the problem: putting pen to paper.

Set aside time to write

The chances are that you’re not going to be able to pen the entire essay in a single sitting, and that’s okay. It’s nothing to be ashamed of or to worry about, and it’s natural that you need to work across multiple days when writing your first essay.

If you want to be able to make great progress, the most important thing is sticking to a routine. You need to have consistency in your application, and you need to be able to know when you are at your most productive. It’s no good staying up late one night and then carrying on early the next morning. You’d be far better off writing for the same amount of time but on two successive afternoons. Think about how your studies fit in with the rest of your daily life, and then choose the time that seems most appropriate. If you box it off and decide it’s only for writing, you’ll be in a great routine before you even know it.

Clear space so you can focus

As well as having time to write each day, you need a place to write too. The world is full of distractions (most of them are digital and social) so that means you’re going to want to keep yourself to yourself, and your phone in a different room. It might seem a little boring or uncomfortable at first, but you need to practice the habit of deep work. It’s what will allow you to create the most in the shortest time — ideal if you want to have plenty of time leftover to spend doing the other things that matter to you.

Have a daily word count in mind

Telling yourself that you want to write an essay today is one thing, but if you’re really going to push yourself to stick to your goal then you need to get quantitative. If you have a word count in mind that you need to hit, then it will prevent you from giving up and throwing in the towel the minute you start having to think and concentrate more than feels normal. Just like working out in the gym, it’s the temporary moments of extra effort that really drive the big differences. It’s when you’ll see the biggest improvement in your writing ability, and the lessons you teach yourself will stay with you for years to come. Ideal if you want to become a fluent Mandarin writer, as well as an engaging face-to-face speaker.

Read widely to provide context

When you’re immersed in an essay it can be all too easy to become blinkered and fail to pay attention to everything else that’s going on around you. Of course, you want to be focused on the task at hand, but you don’t want to be single-minded to the point of ignoring other great learning resources that are just a click away.

Reading widely is one of the best ways to improve your essay writing because it exposes you to techniques and approaches used by the best of the best. You’re not expected to be able to instantly write like a native speaker after an hour of reading. But what you will be able to do with consistent application is build up confidence and familiarity with written Mandarin. Over time this will reflect on the quality and depth of your writing as you gradually improve and take onboard lessons you’ve learned.

Take a break before you proofread

Last but not least, you need to remember that essay writing is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s all about taking the time to get things written before you hand them in, not racing through to try and finish on time. If you want to get the most out of your writing you need to take a day off between finishing your draft and proofing it. That way your brain will have had plenty of time to reflect on the work you’ve produced, and you’ll be able to spot many more little mistakes and places for improvement than you would if you proofed right away.

Final Thoughts

Writing Mandarin is a challenging task that will test your language skills and make you think hard about how to apply what you’ve learned so far. It might be slow going to begin with, but that’s great as it means you’re pushing your limits and building on your existing skills. If you want to be able to master Mandarin, you need to persevere and stay the course. Once you do, you’ll start to improve a lot faster than you expect.

By Diana Adjadj | A Super Chineasian

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How to Write a Good Chinese Essay

Posted by Lilian Li 17816

For any kind of language, the essay is the most difficult thing to do in the exam. Generally speaking, writing articles is just to tell a story, after you make the story clear, the article also is finished. But it also different with speaking. A good article is like a art, is worth for people to appreciate, to taste. But how to accomplish such a good art? I think the most important thing is the three points: attitude, subject matter, emotional.

A good beginning is half done. For writing, material selection and design are not the start. The most important thing still is to adjust their mentality as well. When you decided to write, then dedicated yourself to write, not half-hearted, and your thinking nature won't be upset. Once the train of thought was interrupted, your speed will be slow and the point will be word count. So how can you write down a interesting article with a good quality? All in all, attitude is can decide the success or failure of the articles.

Subject is the biggest problem in our writing. It is from life, but not all people can observe life, experience life. The only point is to write the true things, maybe not so tortuous plots, but can write a really life. Moreover, when you get the subject, there are some tips for students to pay attention:

1. Make the topic request clear: The article should around the topic, pay attention to the demand of genre and number of words, some restrictive conditions and avoid distracting, digression.

2. Determine the center, choose the right material. To conform to the fact that a typical, novel, so it’s easy to attract the attention of people.

3. Make a good outline, determine the general, write enough words.

4. Sentence writing smooth, there is no wrong character, no wrong grammar in article.

Emotion, it is very important. If we compared an article to be a human. So emotion is his soul. Man is not vegetation, when they meet something, there must be personal thoughts and feelings. Sometimes it also tend to have their own original ideas. If you can put your own thoughts, feelings and insights into the article, then this article will be very individual.

Chinese essay is not just meaning some simple Chinese characters and make a simple sentences, it needs the Chinese grammar and sentence structure, if you don't familiar with Chinese grammar, you can learn our Chinese grammar course .

At last, adhere to write diary at ordinary times, it can practicing writing. Try to read some good articles, good words and good paragraphs with a good beginning and end. Learn to accumulate and draw lessons from them.

If you are interested in our Chinese grammar course, you can try our one online free trial , you will enjoy it.

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How to Become a Rockstar Chinese Writer

The importance of learning Chinese writing

Nowadays more and more people are beginning to   learn Chinese. For the most part, they are only focusing on learning how to speak Chinese. But concerning using this language, they also need to learn Chinese writing. Writing can reflect a writer’s power of thought and language organization skills. It is critical to master Chinese writing if you want to take your Chinese to the next level.

How to write good Chinese essays? The following five steps will improve your Chinese writing.

Become familiar with the Chinese Character Writing

In order to write a good Chinese essay, a fundamental step is to be familiar with Chinese characters. Chinese characters are different when you compare them to English letters. Chinese characters are hieroglyphs and   each stroke of a Chinese character is different from the next stroke. Familiarity of Chinese character writing is indispensable for anyone who wants to write nice Chinese essays.

Increase Your Vocabulary

The Chinese language includes 100,000 vocabulary words. If you want to just know the most used words you still need to learn several thousand words. A good writer needs to acquire as many words as possible. How can you enlarge your vocabulary? The best method is to listen, read and learn as much Chinese as possible. Don’t forget to apply what you have learned to your Chinese writing so that you can make continual progress.

Acquire Grammar and Sentence Patterns

Chinese grammar and   sentence patterns need to be acquired in order to improve your Chinese writing. Generally speaking, grammar consists of words, phrases and sentence structure. In terms of single words, Chinese words can be classified as lexical and functional words. In terms of phrases, Chinese phrases can be divided into CO (co-ordinate phrases), SP (subject-predicate phrases), and VO (verb-object phrases). In terms of sentence patterns, a Chinese sentence includes subject, predicate, object, adverbial, attribute and complementary. All of the above grammar points are necessary to study if you want to learn how to write in Chinese.

Persistence in Reading Everyday

Reading can broaden one’s horizon, and it can aid their writing. Reading everyday is a great way to help people learn how to have good Chinese writing ability. The content of reading can be very broad. It can be from novels, or newspapers, and it can be about subjects like economics or psychology. Remember you should read about things you are interested in. After a certain period of accumulation by reading, you will greatly improve your Chinese writing.

Do Writing Exercise on a Variety of Subjects

Practice makes perfect. Apply this proverb in Chinese writing. You need to do a lot of writing exercises to make your Chinese writing excellent. It has been suggested to begin with simple subjects, like personal hobbies, future dreams or anything else that can be understood easily. Students with more experience can write about more complicated topics like economics, politics and society. You should consider all these aspects, because doing writing exercise on a variety of subjects can help improve a person’s writing ability.

General Chinese (Beginner Level) General Chinese (Intermediate Level)

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should add some pictures to make it interesting!

Hi Deynika. Thanks for your advice, we will try to add some interesting pictures in our posts.

I love chinese writing and it is a lot interesting. Can you send a list of chinese words to improve vocabulary? Thanks

You can check out our blog, it introduces many interesting words, slang and useful expressions. In addition, we offer many video lessons to help you improve vocabulary. Hope it will help.

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How to Write a Chinese Essay

by That's Mandarin | Dec 16, 2020

As a Chinese student, learning how to write an essay in this language is very important. After all, how else are you going to express yourself? Writing is one of the ways professors use to teach this language because writing helps with the retention of information.

The more essays you write, the better you get at communicating with Chinese. To write a good essay, you first have to reach a high language mastery level.

Do you admire the students who write seamless Chinese essay? If you do, then you should know that you too can achieve this level of proficiency. In the meantime, don’t be afraid to pay for your essay if you cannot write it on your own. Online academic writers are a resource each student should take advantage of.

Here are tips to help you get better at writing essays in Chinese.

Learn New Chinese Words

The key to communicating in a new language is learning as many words as you can. Take it upon yourself to learn at least one Chinese word a day. Chinese words are to essay writing what bricks are to a building. The more words you have, the better you get at constructing meaningful sentences.

Case in point, if you’re going to write a Chinese sentence that constitutes ten words, but you don’t know the right way to spell three of those words, your sentence might end up not making sense.

During your Chinese learning experience, words are your arsenal and don’t forget to master the meaning of each word you learn.

Read Chinese Literature

Reading is the most effective way of learning a new language. Remember not to read for the sake of it; find out the meaning of each new word you encounter. When you are an avid reader of Chinese literature, nothing can stop you from writing fluent Chinese.

In the beginning, it might seem like you’re not making any progress, but after a while, you will notice how drastically your writing will change. Receiving information in Chinese helps your brain get accustomed to the language’s sentence patterns, and you can translate this to your essays.

Be extensive in your reading to ensure you get as much as possible out of each article. Remember that it’s not about how fast you finish an article, but rather, how much you gain from the exercise.

Translate Articles from your Native Language to Chinese

Have you ever thought about translating your favorite read to Chinese? This exercise might be tedious, but you will learn a lot from it. The art of translation allows you to seamlessly shift from one language’s sentence pattern into the other. The more you do this, the easier it will be for your brain to convert English sentences into Chinese phrases that people can comprehend.

You can always show your Chinese professor your translations for positive criticism. The more you get corrected, the better you will get at translation. Who knows, you might actually like being a translator once you graduate.

Final Thoughts

Writing in Chinese is as foreign as writing in any other language you’re not familiar with. Despite the unfamiliarity, however, it is possible to get better at it with practice. Read as many Chinese articles as you can and make sure you learn at least one new Chinese word each day. In no time, you’ll be at pro at writing Chinese essays.

by Adrian Lomezzo

Adrian  Lomezzo is a freelance writer. Firstly, he has been developing as a content manager and working with different websites, and the main goal of his was to develop the content making it in the first place. Secondly,  Adrian  had a big desire to help students and adults in self-development in this field and teach them to improve their skills. As a lover of traveling, he did not want to be in one place, and became a writer who could be closer to everyone, and share precious information from the corners of the world.

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How to Write a Chinese Essay?

However, this is not an option.

Chinese essay writing is an important part in GCE O level Higher Chinese Language or Chinese Language exam.

Then, what are the students suppose to write in an essay?   For GCE O level Chinese exam in May 2017, many parents complained about the essay questions set were too difficult ( link ).  However, this is the direction we are heading in O level Chinese and the students need to level up necessarily.

Before we even talk about what to write, we must first know what will be tested.

For GCE O level Chinese exam , essay writing is in section 2 of Paper 1.

In this section, students are expected to choose to write 1 out of 3 questions, and the 3 questions will be  in one of the following categories:

• 情景文 (Scenario essay writing)
• 说明文 (Expository)
• 议论文 (Argumentative)
• 材料作文 (Material essay writing)

Each category would need students to write the essay using different skill set. Students need to master the required skill set in order to write essays that meet the criteria.

For 情景文 , students need to use the skills of writing 记叙文 and characters descriptions ; for 说明文 , they need to use the skills of expository essay writing ;  议论文 needs the 3 key elements; as for 材料作文 , depending on the question, students will either need to use the skills for 记叙文 or 议论文 .

When students are clear with all these skills, they will find Chinese essay writing a lot more easier.  When equipped with these necessary writing skills , they will be able to focus more on acquiring their language skills.

With our help, we are confident that our students are able to master all these essential Chinese essay writing skills.

Call 97690373 today to register for our class.

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Common terms and phrases, about the author  (2002), bibliographic information.

Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) is published annually.

CLEAR journal is a leading resource for Chinese Literature academic discussion worldwide and has been published for over 30 years.

Click below for two most recent CLEAR journal Table of Contents.

CLEAR History

CLEAR was created based on discussions between eight scholars‒Eugene Eoyang, Joseph S. M. Lau, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Wu-chi Liu, Irving Lo, Ronald Miao, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., and William Schultz‒from the universities of Arizona, Indiana and Wisconsin spread over the early months of 1977. The journal was formally launched at a meeting on 18 March 1977 in Irving Lo’s living room in Bloomington, IN. Over the next year the founding editors, Eoyang and Nienhauser, received grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Association for Asian Studies, and the three affiliated universities as well as from members of the original editorial board (especially Elling Eide and Irving Lo) and individuals (especially Nancy C. Ing), allowing the production of the first two issues in 1979. Over the years CLEAR has published symposia, essays, articles, reviews and occasional forums on all aspects of traditional and modern Chinese literature. It is still the only western-language periodical devoted to Chinese literature. Having gained a worldwide reputation and audience, CLEAR now appears annually in December under the direction of editors Haun Saussy, Michelle Yeh and Rania Huntington.

Characters on the website were written by Chow Tse-tsung (1916-2007). Copyright © 2012-2024 by CLEAR | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) #0161-9705

Free printable resources to help you write better Chinese

Chinese character practice paper containing a grid that resembles the character for rice, 米.

A4 Paper: PDF | PNG US Paper: PDF | PNG

Chinese character practice paper containing a grid that resembles the character for field, 田.

Remove the stabilizers and go freestyle in the empty grid.

Essay Paper

The standard 20x20, 400 character essay writing paper for knuckling down and writing your Chinese homework.

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The Chinese Essay

Edited and translated by David E. Pollard 1999 400 pages ISBN 962-7255-21-1

Table of contents

This anthology of seventy-four representative essays from the 3rd century to the late 20th century is the first of its kind in a Western language. The translations are prefaced by an informative historical survey as well as commentaries on each author. It offers readers a unique opportunity to sample the best from a genre central to the Chinese literary tradition.

David E. Pollard, the editor and translator, served as Chair Professor of Chinese at London University from 1979 to 1989, and Chair Professor of Translation at The Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1989 to 1997.

'Sinology has rarely touched upon the essay. Professor Pollard's anthology fills this yawning gap.'

—GP Deshpande in China Report

'... never has the considerable tradition of the modem Chinese essay been presented so richly.'

—MCLC Book Reviews

'The reader will certainly get a feel for the range of the Chinese essay genre. But he will get something more ... This collection contains a vast amount of information on the details of everyday life, on man's reaction to the environment, on the textures of social intercourse and on Chinese attitudes and reaction to the world they inhabit.'

—Denis Twitchett, Emeritus Professor of Chinese, Cambridge University

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Biden’s China Tariffs Are the End of an Era for Cheap Chinese Goods

The president’s move to protect strategic manufacturing sectors from low-cost competition aims to increase jobs, but consumers might not like the costs.

By Jim Tankersley

Jim Tankersley has covered the effects of the China Shock on the American economy across several administrations

For the first two decades of the 21st century, many consumer products on America’s store shelves got less expensive . A wave of imports from China and other emerging economies helped push down the cost of video games, T-shirts, dining tables, home appliances and more.

Those imports drove some American factories out of business, and they cost more than a million workers their jobs. Discount stores and online retailers, like Walmart and Amazon, flourished selling low-cost goods made overseas. But voters rebelled. Stung by shuttered factories, cratered industries and prolonged wage stagnation, Americans in 2016 elected a president who vowed to hit back at China on trade. Four years later, they elected another one.

In separate but overlapping efforts, former President Donald J. Trump and President Biden have sought to revive and protect American factories by making it more expensive to buy Chinese goods. They have taxed imports in legacy industries that were hollowed out over the last quarter-century, like clothes and appliances, and newer ones that are struggling to grow amid global competition with China, like solar panels .

Mr. Biden’s decision on Tuesday to codify and escalate tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump made clear that the United States has closed out a decades-long era that embraced trade with China and prized the gains of lower-cost products over the loss of geographically concentrated manufacturing jobs. A single tariff rate embodies that closure: a 100 percent tax on Chinese electric vehicles , which start at less than $10,000 each and have surged into showrooms around the world, but have struggled to crack government barriers to the U.S. market.

Democrats and Republicans once joined forces to engage economically with Beijing, driven by a theory that America would benefit from outsourcing production to countries that could manufacture certain goods more cheaply, in part by paying their workers low wages. Economists knew some American workers would lose their jobs, but they said the economy would gain overall by offering consumers low-cost goods and freeing up companies to invest in higher-value industries where the United States had an innovation advantage.

The parties are now competing to sever those ties. Lawmakers have taken increasingly hard lines on China’s labor practices, intellectual property theft from foreign businesses and generous subsidies for factories that produce far more than Chinese consumers can buy.

It is unclear what new era of policymaking will emerge from those political incentives: Mr. Biden’s brand of strategic industrial policy, Mr. Trump’s retrenchment to a more self-contained domestic economy, or something else entirely.

It is also not clear whether the American public, still reeling from the country’s most rapid burst of inflation in 40 years, will tolerate the pains that could accompany the transition.

“The old consensus has been blown apart, and a new one has not arisen,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who helped lead the pioneering research into what has come to be known as the China Shock of the early 2000s, when China’s acceptance into the World Trade Organization helped wipe out manufacturing jobs across the developed world.

But consumers and voters, Mr. Autor cautioned, “can’t have it both ways. You can make a trade-off. All the world is trade-offs. If you want to get to the point where the U.S. maintains and regains leadership in these technological areas, you’re going to have to pay more. And it’s not clear it’ll work.”

Despite their mutual embrace of forms of protectionism, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are offering voters contrasting views of how the American economy should engage with China in their rematch election.

Mr. Trump wants to tear down the bridges of commerce between the world’s two largest economies and dramatically restrict trade overall. He has pledged to raise tariffs on all Chinese imports, by revoking the “most favored nation” trade status that Congress voted to bestow on China at the end of the Clinton administration, and ban some Chinese goods entirely. He would impose new taxes on all imports from around the world.

Mr. Trump bluntly asserts China will pay the cost of those tariffs, not consumers, though detailed economic studies contradict him. But Robert Lighthizer, his former trade representative who remains an influential voice in Mr. Trump’s trade discussions, told New York Times reporters late last year that it was worth trading higher consumer prices for increased manufacturing employment.

“There’s a group of people who think that consumption is the end,” Mr. Lighthizer said. “And my view is production is the end, and safe and happy communities are the end. You should be willing to pay a price for that.”

Mr. Biden rejects Mr. Trump’s proposals as too broad and costly. He wants to build a protective fortress around strategic industries like clean energy and semiconductors, using tariffs and other regulations. Mr. Biden is also showering companies in those sectors with billions in government subsidies , including for green-energy technologies through the Inflation Reduction Act .

“Investment must be paired with trade enforcement to make sure the comeback we are seeing in communities around the country is not undercut by a flood of unfairly underpriced exports from China,” Lael Brainard, who directs the White House National Economic Council, said in a speech on Thursday. “We have learned from the past. There can be no second China Shock here in America.”

Many economists who continue to favor less restricted trade with China have criticized both candidates’ plans, and not simply because they risk raising prices for American shoppers. They say Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Biden’s policies could slow economic growth. Cutting off Chinese competition, they say, could force companies and consumers to spend money on artificially expensive domestic goods, instead of on new and innovative products that would create new industries and new jobs.

“We’re going to hurt our productivity by massively overspending on these things,” said R. Glenn Hubbard, a Columbia University economist who led the White House Council of Economic Advisers under former President George W. Bush.

Some Democrats say Mr. Biden’s best hope of building a lasting, successful China trade policy is by spending more, including potentially another round of subsidies for semiconductors and other high-tech manufacturing, and by going further on enforcement. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, a career-long China and trade hawk in Congress, has pushed Mr. Biden to ban Chinese electric vehicles outright.

Jennifer Harris, a former Biden aide who now leads the Economy and Society Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, has pushed the administration to couple its industrial policy spending with even stricter rules on what the recipients of that money can do with it. She wants stronger mandates for domestic automakers to shift to electric vehicles, for example, and stricter curbs on stock buybacks to force companies receiving government grants, like semiconductor manufacturers, to invest more in research and development.

“This begins the much harder chapter that I think is much less attempted in U.S. history of industrial policy,” Ms. Harris said: “Making industry really prove it out.”

Voters will sour on those efforts, she added, if Mr. Biden’s policies do not help quickly drive down prices of Made-in-the-U.S.A. products. “Americans want it both ways, and they’re going to get grumpy when prices go up,” she said.

Polls show voters are already extremely grumpy about price increases, which are related to supply-chain snarls and government and central bank stimulus as the world emerged from the Covid-19 recession.

Inflation concerns are weighing on Mr. Biden’s re-election chances. Current and former Biden aides are hopeful they will not also discredit Mr. Biden’s economic policy strategy, if he were to win a second term. Persistently higher prices from new tariffs could also hurt Mr. Trump’s approval, if he were to regain the White House.

Those political questions are driving uncertainty about what the new era of China policy will ultimately settle into. Mr. Hubbard would like to see a retreat from protectionism and a re-embrace of what you might call more traditional views of trade policy: enforce global rules, invest heavily in national innovation to retain an edge, and when you do lose industries to a global rival, spend big to retrain the workers who are displaced so they can find new jobs.

He concedes there is little appetite in the American electorate for such a policy. So does Ms. Harris. “The idea that we’re just going to run this movie again, knowing the political fallout that came from the first round, is just complete suicide to me,” she said.

Mr. Autor said that, economically speaking, he would not like to return to the previous era of China trade. He is generally complimentary of Mr. Biden’s industrial efforts, including his China policy, but says the president should “give up” on support for some sectors of the economy where China has driven costs extremely low, like solar cells.

His latest research warns of the economic perils of poorly designed trade policy, but it also explains why presidents might keep pursuing it. In a recent paper, written with several fellow economists, Mr. Autor found that Mr. Trump’s tariff-centered approach did not succeed in bringing many factory jobs back to America.

But, the economists found, the policy seemed to have won Mr. Trump and his party more votes.

Jim Tankersley writes about economic policy at the White House and how it affects the country and the world. He has covered the topic for more than a dozen years in Washington, with a focus on the middle class. More about Jim Tankersley

Inside the Biden Administration

Here’s the latest news and analysis from washington..

War in Ukraine:  President Biden barred Ukraine from firing U.S. weapons into Russia to “avoid World War III.” After a sobering trip to Kyiv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken wants to ease that rule .

Live Nation:  The Justice Department is suing Live Nation Entertainment , the owner of Ticketmaster, asking a court to break up the company over claims it illegally maintained a monopoly in the live entertainment industry.

Relations With Kenya:  During the Kenyan president’s state visit , Biden will designate the East African nation as a “major non-NATO ally.”

Hidden Fees:  Biden’s effort to crack down on “junk fees”  from airlines and credit-card companies is doubling as a war against inflation.

Student Loans:  Biden announced the cancellation of another $7.7 billion in student loans , building on his strategy of chipping away at college debt by tweaking existing programs.

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The Chinese Essay Hardcover – March 15, 2000

Veteran sinologist David Pollard has selected and translated the best and most representative examples of Chinese prose writing from the third century to the contemporary period. Though spanning the past 1,800 years, the bulk of the selections are from the twentieth century and range from early masters, such as Lu Xun, to the major writers of the middle generation, such as Ye Chengtao and Liang Yuchun.

• Print length 372 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Columbia University Press
• Publication date March 15, 2000
• Dimensions 6.25 x 0.75 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0231121180
• ISBN-13 978-0231121187
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

"In keeping with its venerable tradition of publishing scholarship on China, Columbia has produced a groundbreaking work edited by a respected Sinologist and translator. In his lengthy and useful introduction to this collection of essays by 36 Chinese authors, Pollard discusses the important differences between the Western notion of 'essay' and its Chinese version--or sanwen (everything that is not a poem)--which is steeped in the classical school curriculum....Pollard's up-to-date, lucid translations of this specialized form of prose can be read effectively as a companion piece to Elizabeth Buckley Ebrey's sourcebook Chinese Civilization and Society (CH, Jul'81) by anyone interested in serious study of Chinese history and culture." -- Choice

"These translations are based on sound scholarship and very wide reading. The pieces that introduce each essay are clear, informative, witty, and memorable. They are aimed at the general reader... someone who wants to understand what concerns Chinese authors over the ages have dealt with in essay form, who would like to get an idea of their stylistic approach, who wishes to get an insight into the imaginative processes of a range of fascinating individuals, and who is motivated by a wish to broaden his or her own experience in other literatures." -- Denis Twitchett, former professor of Chinese, Cambridge University

About the Author

David Pollard is a veteran scholar of sinology and one of the most respected interpreters and translators of the Chinese essay. He was previously professor of Chinese at the University of London and professor of translation at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he coedited Renditions , the Chinese-English translation journal, with his wife, Eva Hung.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia University Press; 0 edition (March 15, 2000)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 372 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0231121180
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0231121187
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.75 x 9 inches

About the author

David e. pollard.

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Opinion American students have soured on China. That’s bad for the U.S.

As fewer American students study in China, the U.S. will suffer a shortage of China experts.

For nearly three decades, throngs of young Americans looking for an exotic overseas adventure have headed to China. They studied Mandarin. They went on exchanges at universities in Beijing and Shanghai, and far-flung cities such as Wuhan and Nanjing. They found jobs teaching English, writing for the proliferating number of English-language magazines and newspapers, or gigging as models or TV show extras as Chinese-speaking foreigners.

China’s economy was booming, and American businesses were expanding, lured by the prospects of more than 1 billion Chinese consumers. For a generation of young Americans, being proficient in Chinese and having experience living and working in China could lead to a successful career.

Now, that’s all changed . China isn’t cool anymore.

Fewer American college students are studying Chinese . And the number of them on exchanges has dwindled to about 700 in 2023 from a high of nearly 25,000 a decade ago. This mirrors a drop in American tourists, businesspeople and journalists in the country.

Friends in Beijing and Shanghai tell me they see far fewer foreigners on the streets and in restaurants and bars. In the mid-1990s, when I traveled to China regularly from Hong Kong, and from 2010 to 2013, when I lived in Beijing and Shanghai, Chinese cities were filled with young Americans. They were playing in bands, spinning discs in clubs, blogging, packing the bars of Sanlitun and the French Concession, and generally having a blast.

But for today’s young people, familiarity with China doesn’t hold the same appeal. The next generation of China experts is shrinking. And this will hamper the United States’ future ability to conduct business, trade, diplomacy and scientific exchanges on an even footing with the world’s second-largest economy.

The shift started with covid-19. For three years, China largely isolated itself from the world with its draconian pandemic restrictions. Academic exchanges were scrapped, visas canceled, and flights into and out of the country sharply curtailed. The few foreigners who remained found themselves barricaded in their apartments for weeks at a time, usually with no warning and without adequate food on hand.

Also, in 2020, the United States shut down its Peace Corps program in China and its successful Fulbright China Program , which had since 1979 nurtured the China experts now serving as government officials and journalists.

More recently, U.S. multinationals have been reducing their staffs and footprints in China, as the Biden administration pursues a policy of “decoupling” or “de-risking.” Many of these firms have moved some of their operations to other Asian countries such as Thailand.

At the same time, China has become a less hospitable place for foreigners.

China’s Ministry of State Security, which oversees the country’s intelligence agencies, has been issuing alarmist warnings for citizens to be on guard against “ foreign forces ” trying the steal state secrets and foment unrest. Foreign consultancy firms have been singled out as potential spy nests. Last year, the government warned female civil servants to be wary of handsome foreigners trying to woo them, because they might be espionage agents.

“Americans are afraid of the security police and the omnipresent surveillance in China, as well as being suspected of being spies by their Chinese classmates,” said Susan Shirk, a China expert at the University of California at San Diego and author of the book “ Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise .” The current geopolitical tension, she said, “discourages young people from betting their futures on business, academic or other careers related to China.”

Also, a wealthier, more confident China under President Xi Jinping — who has spoken of restoring the country’s greatness on the world stage — has seen a rise in nationalism, xenophobia and anti-Western rhetoric, made evident by an army of trolls on social media. Many Chinese believe their country no longer needs foreigners.

U.S. travel warnings haven’t helped. The State Department advises Americans going to China to “reconsider travel due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans and the risk of wrongful detentions.” It warns that Americans can be forced to take drug tests and be detained if they test positive, even if they used drugs in places where they were legal before entering China.

Chinese students, however, are still heading to U.S. universities in large numbers — around 300,000 at last count . And they are learning English at a rapid clip, often as early as elementary school. For seven years, I taught journalism at the University of Hong Kong, and I always marveled at the English proficiency of my mainland Chinese students — some of whom had never left China. One young woman with a distinctly American accent told me she learned her English “by watching ‘Friends.’”

This imbalance — Chinese learning about us, Americans learning less about them — puts the United States at a huge future disadvantage.

“If the current trends hold, we will have a serious deficit in the kind of human capital the U.S. needs in the future to deal with China,” said Minxin Pei, who teaches Chinese politics at Claremont McKenna College in California. “Our government’s ability to make the right policy decisions will deteriorate.”

We’re also not building the people-to-people exchanges vital to building trust and understanding — and avoiding misunderstandings that could lead to conflict.

Trends can shift, of course. I recall how Japan, before China, was all the rage among American students. And both the United States and China have expressed interest in more U.S. students making the trip. But first, Washington and Beijing need to work at rebuilding the bridges. They should start at the top by lowering the temperature and reining in the harsh rhetoric between themselves.