People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the ruling communist party, featured a small front page article headlined, “Xi Jinping congratulating Trump as US president by phone.”
No editorial piece related to the election is in the hard copy of the newpaper. But two online editorials, and another piece from state-run Xinhua News Agency, all played down the possibility of a worsening US-China relationship after Trump’s election victory yesterday.
“The new president might have a valiant approach to trade, for example to urge China to follow international rules, or cause more disputes in the World Trade Organisation, but it does not mean he will push too hard. Trump is a businessman,” one article in the People’s Daily said, quoting an analyst.
On Weibo, the micro-blogging platform similar to Twitter, the discussions are more lively. “Trump won” was the top trending keywords, searched more than 1.9 million times.
The topic page “Trump won” on Weibo has generated more than 270 million of views. Most found the results “shocked” and “unbelievalbe”, and interested in analysing why Trump could win.
Some asked: “Based on China’s educated population and people’s income distribution, who would win if we had a democratic election?”
One netizen on Weibo linked to an article in a Chinese language publication called Globe, which said the Trump victory “is the greatest blessing to China”, as compared to Hillary Clinton, who has always been hostile toward China.
But the view on Trump does not seem to be positive about his leadership. Many of the posts expressed hope that Trump’s outlandish ideas and offensive rhetoric will negatively impact on the US and turn out to be beneficial for China.
