When Trump tweeted on 5 May that the China trade deal was off, the historical echoes in Beijing were loud and clear. Almost exactly 100 years earlier, China’s ‘May Fourth Movement’ of 1919 was a direct response to the actions of President Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I. Wilson had promised China, an American ally, that German colonies in Shandong would be returned to Chinese sovereignty, but instead handed them to Japan. China exploded with anti-American, nationalist sentiment. One of the eventual consequences was the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, which for the last 70 years has ruled the country.

Thus, Trump has handed Xi Jinping a remarkably effective nationalist card to play at a time when he has been under pressure at home because of a slowing economy. The Chinese media is now full of accounts of the country’s economic resilience and appeals to patriotism.

What does Trump really want? If he wants to sound tough for his own electorate then mission accomplished. But if he actually wants to change China's position on a trade agreement he may be heading for disaster.

What has happened is China has posted three 'Red Lines' conditions by the US that China finds unacceptable. First, that it would keep tariffs in place for a period after the proposed trade agreement was signed. Second, that it could impose punitive tariffs if it judged China to be in violation of the agreement, and that China would be forbidden from retaliating with its own tariffs. Third, the ever-inflating expectations of the terms under which Beijing would buy American goods under a proposed bilateral purchasing agreement.

Of course governments always have terms they find unacceptable in negotiations but China has made these public. There is no way Chinese leaders can back down from them.

Although China maintains in public that a deal can be reached there must be many in the Party that are thinking 'why bother?' Trump has made it a point to be adversarial on chinese technology, investment, foreign policy and human rights so why should they continue to spend political capital. They might think it better to cut their losses and hunker down.

Time will tell.