President Trump didn’t seem to mind as his worldwide tariffs set off stock market sell-offs and wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth.

“Be cool,” he told Americans.

Then he blinked on Wednesday afternoon in the face of financial turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields that could shake the dominant position of the dollar and the foundation of the U.S. economy.

By pausing some tariffs for dozens of countries for 90 days, he also gave away something to his main rival, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, with whom he has engaged in a game of chicken that risks decoupling the world’s two biggest economies and turning the global economic order upside down.

Mr. Xi learned that his adversary has a pain point.

As reckless and ruthless as Mr. Trump may seem to some parts of the world, in Mr. Xi and China he is squaring off with a leader and a party state that have a long history of single-minded pursuit of policies, even when they resulted in economic and human catastrophe.

Among Chinese, a consensus among both Beijing’s critics and its supporters is that the endgame may come down to which leader will be able to make his people endure misery in the name of the national interest.

“Tariffs and even economic sanctions are not Xi Jinping’s pressure points,” Hao Qun, an exiled Chinese novelist who writes under the name Murong Xuecun, wrote on X. “He is not particularly concerned about the hardships tariffs may cause for ordinary people.”