A weekend topic from the Wall Street Journal. "When Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, Chinese leaders were stunned. They had focused on the prospect of a Hillary Clinton victory. They immediately put out feelers to their oldest and most reliable allies in Washington—big business CEOs and their trade associations. What they heard back was disquieting."

"Mr. Trump was hard to figure out. Populism was on the rise. America was changing, and China had to change too to remain on the right side of the new American leadership. Behind the scenes, many of Beijing’s erstwhile corporate friends would go on to support the administration’s hard line toward China even though they disagreed sharply with the tactic of piling tariffs upon tariffs."

"'The Chinese figure that the bankers and big business own the American government. That’s why they go to them,' says James McGregor, who has worked for years in China as a business consultant and a leader of the American Chamber of Commerce in China."

"For decades that was a winning strategy. Now it no longer was—not just because of the changes in the White House but because of the fraying of relations between Beijing and American business. It was a long slog downward."

"For many U.S. firms, China wasn’t the land of riches they figured it would be. Furniture, bicycle and other low-tech manufacturers soured first, when they realized in the early 2000s that their Chinese suppliers were turning into rivals by selling directly to American retailers. After China ramped up stimulus spending in 2008 at Washington’s urging to combat the global financial crisis, China was awash in tires, steel, glass and other commodities. Exports to America rose, wrecking factory towns across the Midwest and Southeast, which became centers of populist backlash."

"A more assertive China pressed higher-tech foreign companies to hand over intellectual property and provided heavy subsidies for their Chinese state-owned competitors. Many American companies identified with the complaints by Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. that China’s Railways Ministry and state-owned companies poached its technology to become powerful competitors in high-speed rail."

"By 2014, just one-third of members of the American Chamber of Commerce in China said they were optimistic about their two-year prospects in China, about half the percentage in 2008. A 2015 Chinese development plan called 'Made in China 2025' galvanized concern. The report laid out strategies to gain dominant shares in 10 important technology sectors, which foreign firms figured could only occur through massive subsidies and technology theft."

"When Mr. Trump took office, Chinese leaders turned to American business for political help, as they had before, but the response was different than during the Clinton years. Wang Qishan, then China’s anti-graft czar and a trusted ally of President Xi Jinping, called in CEOs for what he called informal 'old friend' sessions."

"In late 2017, one of his visitors was David Rubenstein, cofounder of Carlyle Group, a U.S. private equity firm with vast investments in China. 'Is Trump a rare phenomenon or a trend?' Mr. Wang asked Mr. Rubenstein, as officials from China’s Foreign Ministry took notes. 'Trump is an indicator of the changing attitudes in the U.S.,' Mr. Rubenstein told him."

"Initially, Chinese leaders dismissed U.S. complaints as whining. American businesses still invested in China and made lots of money, they believed. Americans needed to learn how to compete in a rapidly developing China. 'There is more competition on the Chinese market,' says China’s ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai. 'Maybe the days of so-called easy money in China are gone. Maybe they are gone forever.'"

"When President Trump resorted to tariffs on a scale unseen since the 1930s, Chinese leaders sought to make common cause with U.S. CEOs who opposed tariffs. Beijing mixed blandishments with threats. In May 2018, Mr. Wang, now promoted to vice president, again invited CEOs to meet him. This time, the session was less friendly."

"He lectured them about Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. 'If you know the enemy and yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles,' he told them. China understood the U.S. better than the other way around and would endure far more pain rather than concede, he told them, according to participants. The message: Get your government to back off."

"A month later, a group of 20 mostly American and European multinational CEOs, including those from Goldman Sachs Group and Hyatt Hotels Corp., met with President Xi, who pressed them to help him get American politicians to ease up on China. He warned them they could be wounded in a trade war if they failed."

"By September 2018, the message from American business to China—that things had to change—couldn’t be mistaken. During the U.N. General Assembly meeting, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with a Who’s Who of corporate America in a midtown Manhattan conference room. The Chinese diplomat put the blame for souring relations solely on the Trump administration. Not so, said one CEO after another, frustrated at China’s unfulfilled promises, according to meeting participants."

"Three leading U.S. corporate trade groups—the U.S. Chamber, the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers—which had worked tirelessly and spent heavily to get China into the WTO, now publicly proposed agendas for the administration to pressure China to change."

"Beijing is no longer counting on American companies to get Washington to retreat. Instead, it is putting a bigger emphasis on going it alone. Beijing’s 'AnKe Project' is designed to purge Chinese government agencies, telecommunications companies and power grids of foreign hardware and software. The AnKe project and others like it are set to go forward, no matter who wins the U.S. presidential election this year. It marks a long-time shift in priorities and a recognition that Beijing no longer counts on its American corporate allies to chalk up victories in Washington."