One month ago, Beijing ordered China’s state media “not to use aggressive language” for Trump. As of Sunday, that directive has clearly expired, and after a weekend of bluster by President Trump in which he proclaimed that he has the upper hand in the trade war with China, Beijing finally responded angrily through state media, saying the nation is ready to endure the economic fallout, and launched an “unusually personal attack” against Trump’s trade policies on Monday, saying Trump’s trade “extortion” would not work according to Reuters.

An editorial in the nationalist Global Times on Sunday evening declared that China is prepared for a “protracted war” and doesn’t fear sacrificing short-term economic interests, “considering the unreasonable U.S. demands, a trade war is an act that aims to crush China’s economic sovereignty, trying to force China to be a U.S. economic vassal.”

Separately, in a front-page editorial on Monday, the overseas edition of People’s Daily said Trump was “starring in his own carefully orchestrated street fighter-style deceitful drama” in which diplomacy had been reduced to nothing but a “trading game in which everything should follow the rule of America first”.

“To realise the goal of reviving the American economy, Trump has chosen a simple but crude way. He has bypassed the multilateral trading system of the WTO and started trade conflicts, forcing countries, including its traditional allies, to cede their interests to those of the United States,” the People’s Daily said.

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