Amid US-China rancour, salvoes are fired in 280 characters
- Though reluctant to play referee, Twitter has appended fact-check warnings to posts by President Donald Trump and Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian
- Much ‘wolf warrior’ messaging has occurred on Twitter, a platform banned in heavily censored mainland China
As violence and protests over police treatment of African-Americans racks US cities and China accuses the Washington of hypocrisy in decrying its own unrest while supporting protests in Hong Kong, Twitter finds itself playing an increasingly important role in the trans-Pacific sniping.
Historic distrust between the two giants has even seen President Donald Trump and Chinese “wolf warrior” Zhao Lijian, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, share a dubious distinction: both have had fact-check warnings attached to their tweets.
On Friday, Twitter hid from general view and flagged as “glorifying violence” a Trump tweet suggesting that demonstrators could be shot if they looted. The president later claimed his words were misconstrued.
On Twitter over the weekend, the nationalist Global Times upped the volume with accusations of a double standard in the different way Washington viewed protesters in the US and Hong Kong.
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“Their similarities are overwhelming: they all defy the law, subvert order, and are destructive,” the state media arm said in a tweet, quoting outspoken editor-in-chief Hu Xijin. “This kind of thinking is intolerable.”
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying weighed in Saturday with a sharp barb aimed at her US counterpart, the State Department’s Morgan Ortagus, in a tit-for-tat showdown over their countries’ respective national policy.
