China must prepare to strike back against Donald Trump’s reckless “tantrums”, a Communist party-controlled tabloid has warned, as a series of snubs to Beijing from the US president-elect continued to generate diplomatic aftershocks.
Trump’s decision to hold a protocol-trampling conversation with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen last Friday and his subsequent Twitter attacks on Chinahave caused consternation in Beijing.
China’s official public reaction has so far been measured.
“We will not speculate on what motivates President-elect Trump and his team into taking certain moves but we will surely make ourselves clear if what they say concerns China,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang told reporters on Monday, adding that the billionaire’s team had been made “fully aware of China’s solemn attitude”.
Speaking in New York, Henry Kissinger, the veteran US diplomat responsible for helping re-establish relations with China in the early 1970s, said he had been “very impressed at the calm reaction of the Chinese leadership, which suggests a determination to see whether a calm dialogue can be developed”.
But the Global Times, a state-run newspaper which sometimes reflects views from within the Communist party, was less reserved, railing against what it called Trump’s outrageous, reckless and unexpected “provocations”.
“Trump’s China-bashing tweet is just a cover for his real intent, which is to treat China as a fat lamb and cut a piece of meat off it,” the nationalist tabloid claimed on Tuesday in an editorial.
The tabloid said Trump’s “tantrum” suggested it was now “inevitable that Sino-US ties will witness more troubles in his early time in the White House”.
“We must be fully prepared, both mentally and physically, for this scenario,” the Global Times warned.
“No matter what Trump thinks, China must be determined to upset his unreasonable requests at his early time in office, and fight back if his moves harm China’s interests, regardless of the consequences to the dynamics of the Sino-US relationship.”
A commentary in the English-language edition of the People’s Daily, the Communist party’s official mouthpiece, also lamented what it called Trump’s unscrupulous and despicable actions.
“Trump and his transition team should realise that making trouble for China-US ties is making troubles for themselves,” it warned.
In the days after Trump’s shock election some academics on both sides of the Pacific had speculated his arrival in the White House might enable a new, warmer phase of US-China relations.
John Delury, a China expert from Yonsei University in Seoul, said Trump’s anti-China campaign rhetoric, his decision to engage with Tsai Ing-wen and the nature of the policy team now forming around the president-elect suggested such expectations were misplaced.
“If you look at his advisers, the China people are not the kind who are looking to improve the relationship [with Beijing],” Delury said.
Among those currently offering Trump tips on China policy are a collection of hawkish scholars whose bibliographies include titles such as Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – A Global Call to Action; The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower; and Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century.
Ultimately, however, Delury said the property tycoon’s true plans remained an enigma, both in Washington and Beijing.
“If Americans themselves don’t know what their president is planning to do, how can the Chinese know?”
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