China state media call Trump’s Taiwan strategy ‘despicable’
BEIJING — President-elect Donald Trump “speaks like a rookie,” China’s state-run media said Monday, describing his suggested use of America’s position on Taiwan as a bargaining chip as “despicable.”
The nationalist tabloid Global Times published an editorial blasting Trump’s strategy and saying China would have a strong response to any reconsideration of the “one China” policy. Since recognizing Beijing in 1979, Washington has maintained only unofficial ties with Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing considers its territory — a status quo that Trump has repeatedly threatened to upend since winning the November election.
“In the past, Trump infuriated us, but now we find him risible,” said the newspaper, which is published by the People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece. “With a skyrocketing ascent in his political life, he has been stunningly confident in his ostensible knowledge of the job, though he speaks like a rookie.”
The English-language China Daily ran an editorial Monday accusing Trump of “playing with fire.”