I’m shocked that the Chinese didn’t have enough foresight to understand that they cannot win a tariff war against an opponent who imports from them 10x as much as the reverse. Going to be tough to put together a face saving out from a blunder of that magnitude.
If you want to see a real hidebound, frozen-in-amber bureaucracy, look at China’s Communist Party and their top leadership.
Everyone looks to everyone else, and they are afraid of each other more than they are of the USA. So decisions take a loooong time, especially when its something they have never considered before.