'We'll fight to the end': China's media ramps up rhetoric in US trade war

Over the last week, China’s state media outlets have called the US government delusional, compared it to apes shouting on a river bank, and offered to teach the Americans a Chinese idiom: diandao heibai, “to invert black and white”, or deliberately distort the truth. 

As trade tensions mount between the US and China, Beijing faces the difficult task of appealing to national pride to shore up confidence in the leadership while also keeping public anger in check.

As US-China ties have deteriorated over the last year, Chinese officials and state media have been relatively restrained. Official statements refer to “trade frictions” with the US, rather than a “trade war”, and have been careful not to name Donald Trump directly or criticise the country as a whole.

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