It looks like the honeymoon phase between China and President-elect Donald Trump is over. A political commentary article criticizing Trump's use of Twitter for diplomatic means was posted on China's official state-run news agency, Xinhua.
According to CNN, the article, which ran on Xinhua's Mandarin website, cited a statement of Clinton supporter and former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in reference to Trump's Twitter outbursts. "It is a commonly accepted that diplomacy is not a child's game -- and even less is it business dealing. As former United States Secretary of State [Madeleine] Albright said, Twitter should not be a tool for foreign policy," the commentary said.
The commentary was published a few days after Trump posted tweets criticizing China's failure to rein in North Korea's continued nuclear program. Trump is also unpopular in the world's second biggest economy because of him upending US foreign policy by speaking directly to Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen. Beijing still considers Taiwan as a province and before Trump, the US only had unofficial diplomatic relations with the island nation in accordance to its policy of deliberate ambiguity.
According to Express UK, officials in Beijing are now scrambling to mount a plan in reaction to Trump's perceived support of Taiwan. While no clear plans have been decided on yet, one possible move for China is to conduct war games in the South China Sea near the island nation to intimidate them.
The Lawyer Herald will be posting more updates on Trump's tweets on his official account and his administration's policy on Taiwan and China in the coming weeks. Will Donald Trump be continuing to use his own Twitter account once he moves to the White House? Will his warm treatment of Taiwan result in a diplomatic crisis between Washington and Beijing? Fire away in the Lawyer Herald comments section. Meanwhile, watch an interview of Donald Trump with the Today Show's Matt Lauer about him being announced as Time Magazine's Person of the Year in the video below.
