In a major blunder, the Chinese embassy in the US retweeted President Donald Trump’s tweet, in which he accused the Democrats of cheating in the presidential election. However, later the embassy said that its official Twitter account was hacked.
Taking to Twitter, Trump wrote, “If somebody cheated in the Election, which the Democrats did, why wouldn’t the Election be immediately overturned? How can a Country be run like this?”
The post carrying a Twitter warning that the claim of election fraud is “disputed” was retweeted by the official account for the Chinese government’s presence in the US.
The embassy then tweeted saying: “The Chinese Embassy twitter account was hacked this afternoon and we condemn such an act. For clarification, the Embassy didn’t do any retweeting on Dec.9.”
This comes days after China criticised the US over sanctions against Chinese officials for their actions in Hong Kong.
China’s foreign ministry had summoned a top US diplomat in China to express “strong indignation and strong condemnation” and vowed to take “reciprocal” action.
The China and US relationship has deteriorated during Trump’s term as the country’s president as the two countries sparred over trade, technology, human rights, and visas for journalists and diplomats.
However, the Chinese government had formally congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on winning the election on 26 November.