Ever since the trade war between Beijing and Washington started more than a year ago, China’s state media has performed contortionist acts in trying to build up a narrative. 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.
