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17-07-2024
BEIJING: Chinese e-commerce platforms have taken down t-shirts featuring an image of Donald Trump pumping his fist into the air moments after he was shot at.
The T-shirts, which went on sale within hours of the shooting, were available on popular e-commerce sites like Taobao and JD.com.
It is unclear why the listings were taken down, but the Chinese internet is heavily controlled, with content considered “sensitive” routinely taken down.
The assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally last Saturday sparked widespread discussion online, with related hashtags trending high on X-like platform Weibo.
Enterprising Chinese retailers leapt into action, with the first batch of T-shirts printed and put up for sale online less than three hours after the shooting.
A cached image on Taobao, one of China’s largest e-commerce sites, shows the T-shirt priced at 39 yuan ($9; £7).
A 25-year-old Taobao retailer told South China Morning Post that she received more than 2,000 orders for the T-shirts a mere three hours after she put it up for sale. Most were from China and the US.
Trump has been the source of online attention in China for years for both positive and negative reasons.
The trade war he waged with Beijing during his presidency enraged the government and many Chinese people, but saw some support as well among them a group of Chinese immigrants in the US who have been translating all of Trump’s tweets via the X account @Trump_Chinese. The account, started in September 2018, has amassed more than 344,000 followers over the years.
There is also a popular online joke that plays on the Chinese translation of Trump which is Chuan. He is often referred to as Chuan Jianguo which translates to “Trump our nation builder” as a means of mocking what they see as his role in helping set China on the path to becoming a superpower.
Chinese entrepreneurs have been cashing in on the interest in him for years now.
Although the listings of T-shirts featuring Trump after the shooting have been pulled in China, online retailers there are still peddling a wide range of Trump merchandise including socks and mugs with his caricature, and red caps bearing his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”. Retailers around the world have also capitalized on the assassination attempt.
Similar T-shirts have been seen available for sale on Lazada and Shopee, e-commerce platforms popular in South East Asia. Lazada is owned by the Chinese technology giant Alibaba Group, which also owns Taobao.
Photographs online also show similar T-shirts for sale in the US. Some had captions added to them, one read “Leaders Never Die”, while another said “Bullet Proof”.
A journalist was able to order a shirt with an image of the moment for 61 yuan ($8), even though the original link said the shirt was no longer available. A customer service representative said it violated regulations, without elaborating, but then provided a link to order the shirt. Another shop on Taobao offered five different T-shirts, all based on photos from Saturday’s rally, when asked whether it had any showing Trump being shot at. They were selling for 34.9 yuan ($4).
For a time Monday, searches that included “Trump Jianguo” turned up shops selling T-shirts with images from the rally though that worked less well as the day went on.
Trump Jianguo began being used as a nickname on the Chinese internet when Trump was in office. Jianguo which means “build a country” was a popular patriotic name for men in the 1950s and 60s when China’s Communist People’s Republic was young. The nickname is a jibe from people who felt some of Trump’s policies actually helped China, despite his sometimes fiery rhetoric. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
