On Friday, China’s South African ambassador cheered former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for advancing the Chinese Communist Party’s official line about the coronavirus not being a “Chinese virus.”
“Justice always speak loudly,” Tian Xuejun tweeted.
The state-owned propaganda outlet China News noted how Hillary Clinton had been quick to criticize President Trump calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” and saying his rhetoric was “racist.” It suggested that he was desperate to “eclipse his poor response in curbing the virus outbreak.”
The ambassador also re-tweeted a post from Chinese spokeswoman Hua Chunying that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was not being truthful about the coronavirus outbreak in Italy being caused by infected Chinese workers going to the European country. “Stop lying through your teeth!” Hua said, claiming “China’s efforts averted hundreds of thousands of infection cases.”
President Trump called the pandemic the “Chinese virus” for the first time on Monday.
During his first speech to the nation on the virus potbreak, Trump referred to the sickness as being “foreign,” prompting criticism from CNN and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that he was being “xenophobic.”
China has pushed a conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was exported to that country by the U.S. Army.