Exclusive | China asks state media to pick battles carefully with long US trade war looming, sources say

China hopes to appeal to potentially sympathetic voices on the other side of the trade war by asking its government officials and state media outlets to avoid being overly and often unnecessarily critical of the United States and its key players, even as it prepares for a protracted trade and technology confrontation with Washington, according to sources who were briefed on the latest government instructions.

Internal briefings held this week reflected the Chinese leadership’s line of thinking that China has to make serious preparations for the worst-case scenario of an intense, broad-based and extended confrontation with the US on the trade, technology and geopolitical fronts, while also keeping open the option that tensions with Washington could ease.

“We have been told not to use ‘the US side’ generally in our copy because there are many different voices within the US,” said one state media executive, who declined to be identified because the instructions are confidential. “The idea is that there are people in the US who are against the trade war or the confrontational approach towards China.”

A second source, who works as an executive in a state-owned enterprise, said that the response by Beijing to the recent US escalation of trade tensions remains “restrained” despite an outpouring of nationalistic commentaries in China’s state media.

“At least there are no people shouting slogans in front of the US embassy or trying to smash American shops in China,” said the state-owned enterprise executive.

In May 1999, angry Chinese citizens shouted anti-American slogans and threw rocks at the US embassy in Beijing after Nato planes bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia, killing three Chinese journalists and injuring dozens of others.