As Chinese netizens pored over the wreckage of the Republican losses in the midterm U.S. elections, the hashtag “Trump Total Defeat” went viral on microblogging platform Weibo, garnering more than 70 million views by Wednesday evening.
Officials in Beijing, however, quickly signaled business as usual. Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, described the elections as a U.S. “domestic affair” during a regular briefing, while showing faith in advancing “understandings reached by the two heads of state,” Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, whose third summit of the year unfolds in two weeks’ time.
China will “expand cooperation, and build a China-U.S. relationship based on mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation,” Mao said.
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