One would think that with a China-US trade war now under way, China's natural impulse was to lash out against Trump, not only in the state-controlled media, but also in statements by top ranking officials.
However, instead Beijing has directed state media to watch how they report on US President Donald Trump, mainland media sources said.
“It’s been said that we should not use aggressive language for Trump,” said a South China Morning Post source, who added that the edict called on media outlets not to make vulgar attacks on Trump to avoid "making this a war of insults", similar to angry back and forth between Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un last summer.
In an oddly demure move for China, even though local officials and state media have attacked the trade policies of the Trump administration, so far they have not laid blame on the US president or his officials, "a move seen as an attempt to avoid antagonising Trump and further complicating negotiations."
Meanwhile, Trump has so far also avoided flinging insults directly at President Xi Jinping, instead reiterating in person and via Twitter that the two “will always be friends, no matter what happens with our dispute on trade”.
Commenting on the decree, Sow Keat Tok, a University of Melbourne lecturer on China’s foreign relations, said that since Trump’s rhetoric has focused on the trade war instead of Xi, the Chinese leader has in turn refrained from making statements about Trump.
So basically, Trump has established a sort of personal relationship with Dictator Xi that allows them to disagree on major state issues, but not make it personal. That seems like a very important development, and one that the Democrats might want to ponder adopting for their relationship with this administration, if they have the wit to do it, which I doubt.“[Xi] allowed the Ministry of Commerce to send out messages instead, again framing the trade as a state-to-state interaction,” he said.“Restraining the state media is important, lest some enthusiastic reporters mention Trump in their pieces. The message is not to antagonise Trump personally, but [to] keep the affair in the realm of state policy.”
It will also be interesting to see what Sundance might have to say about this development over at the Conservative Treehouse.
This is a wise move. The one thing the Trump critics have failed
ReplyDeleteto learn is that he never backs down to anyone! Donald Trump is
the modern incarnation of the 19th century wagon dealer CW Whomphopper
or Cal Worthing, the owner of a chain of Ford dealerships on the West
coast. If a vendor or contractor tried screw him, Trump would dicker
him down to a reasonable price. If he is selling something, he will
start out high and let the customer negotiate the deal down to the
price he had in mind all along.
Hey honey I just a new Ford station wagon, and boy did I screw the
dealer! That is what the President lives for. All this talk of tariffs
with China, Canada and Mexico follow his "Prime directive." All this
talk of trade wars is just his way of renegotiating ill conceived
trade treaties. The same goes for his calls for the UN and NATO
to carry their weight. Canada, Mexico and China have far more to
lose in a trade war than we do.
Once this is all over, it will relate to a more equitable deal that
will benefit working-class Americans. Fer craps sake an out and out
socialist was elected president in Mexico just a few days ago.
He just issued a statement declaring that he is going to clamp down
on illegal immigration at his Southern border.
He may be a Marxist but he is not stupid. He knows that a for real
trade war will devistate Mexico's economy. He also knows that
Obambam's DACA scam primarily benefited the drug cartels and other
criminal entities. If you are a Mexican criminal alien, all you
had to do is borrow, rent, buy or kidnap a Mexican or Central
American kid and claim they migrated from Honduras or name the
country. Ubangi's catch and release policy resulted in 95 percent
of these aliens abandoning their "children." by failing to return
for their "refugee" hearing."
As for those who were not caught, the children ended up in slave
and child sex slave rings in America. If Felonia von Pantsuit had
won, we would not have seen these high profile roundups of human
trafficing rings!
President Xi and President Trump are friends. I know this for a fact. There is mutual respect between the two. That's a good thing.
ReplyDeleteFriends don't have to agree on everything, but they can talk about anything. And that's a very good thing.
That is a good thing, but Xi has a better haircut.
DeleteRe: "It will also be interesting to see what Sundance might have to say about this development over at the Conservative Treehouse"
ReplyDeleteYou might well think that ... but I'll keep looking here first.
There be in quality in the writing, as well as discernment of what you and your commentariat share.
comparing Xi's and our democrats and sjw and libtard press responses to trump and his administrations actions is like comparing an adult with screaming entitled ignorant children who didn't get their daily enema.
ReplyDelete