‘Is it fake news?’: China censors Trump’s US$200 billion tariff tweets
- Mainstream and social media silent on US president’s unexpected reaction to trade talks between China and US moving ‘too slowly’
Chinese investors and manufacturers woke up to tumbling stock markets on Monday morning as censorship by Beijing kept mainstream and social media in the dark over US President Donald Trump’s threat of renewed tariffs on Chinese goods.
The markets opened hours after Trump tweeted that the United States would increase tariffs on US$200 billion of goods from 10 to 25 per cent this Friday. The president complained that progress on trade talks with China had been moving “too slowly”.
Despite sharp market reactions, the three major official state media outlets – newspaper People’s Daily, broadcaster CCTV and Xinhua news agency – had by noon made no mention of the developments in Washington or market reaction to them.
Meanwhile, Caixin and Sina news – the biggest finance news outlets in the country – said the markets were “affected by information”, but did not elaborate.
Global Times eventually made mention of Trump’s tweets, but buried it at the end of a stock market story published just after 1pm, and other state media outlets began reporting on the foreign ministry’s reaction at a press briefing by mid-afternoon.
The trade war between the US and China has ravaged the global economy for almost a year. Before Trump made his announcement on Twitter, Beijing and Washington said they were trying to reach a deal in the trade talks they described as “constructive”.