China's biggest strength is its biggest weakness as well
I was looking at some stats and I realized that the economic growth that China has been reporting (~5% GDP growth) is mostly based on their exports not domestic economy expanding. In other words the demand for Chinese goods by Chinese people isn't really increasing.
OP is mainly about what others do and the effects on them. But on the side of China, I see two major issues as well.
First is that since their economic growth now mainly depends on exports, a tariff war could seriously restrain it and that could have significant effects on inflation in China itself.
To counter that it seems like the Chinese government is responding by trying to switch trade partners and export destinations. How much that would work depends on how many countries are going to join in the tariff war against China. It also cannot be predicted right now because a lot of the countries that we know are going to participate in that war are increasing their imports from China because their businessmen know what's coming so they are trying to import as much as they can before tariffs go up!
So we have to wait and see what happens in the long run.
Second is that China is also going to retaliate against that war. They'll do that by imposing their own tariffs on goods they buy from those countries. For example China is the biggest meat importer and they buy a lot of it from Europe and one of the tariffs they usually increase is on meat from there.
That means pretty much the same thing I said in OP: inflation in China and like always it's just the regular people would be hurt...
Mate, what I believe is that China is confident for some reasons against the US tariff war, which is that their greater part of economy depends largely on exports, right, and if the US imposes higher tariff rates on China, then mate, think about how many big companies that are built in China that are US-based, big example Apple factories, and some other big known brands. And imposing higher tariff rates on China will also mean that increased inflation rates in the US. What do you think? mate, this is just my point of view. CMIIW!
And your facts are also valid here, because these tariff wars will also affect the Chinese economy as well, as some days ago I was reading some news headlines that the Chinese economy is also collapsing badly. Maybe, this can be a reason that prompts both US and Chinese presidents to negotiate to get some good end points to settle this tariff war.