China Briefing | US-China trade war: hardliners in Beijing are gaining influence
- Chinese urging concessions for Washington have been attacked by the media
- Businesses and residential complexes are being forced to change foreign-sounding names, and the war film The Eight Hundred has been cancelled
For much of the year, the official media outlets focused on playing up the potential fallout of the escalating conflict on the US economy while remaining silent on its potentially bigger negative impact on the Chinese economy, giving rise to jokes that Chinese officials seemed to be more concerned about the Americans than their own people.
But since mid-May, when the trade talks collapsed with both sides blaming each other and further hiking import tariffs on each other’s goods, the state media has suddenly started to go all out in turning up the heat.
Commentaries have accused Washington of imposing extreme pressure on Beijing and vowed that the Chinese people will never cave in to its unreasonable demands, citing China’s historical humiliations at the hands of colonial occupiers. Playing the nationalist card has always been the Chinese government’s favourite weapon on occasions like this, and the movie channel of China Central Television has even started to air re-runs of anti-American movies set during the Korean war.
