China is claiming that one of its official embassy Twitter accounts was hacked after a retweet from President Donald Trump claiming election fraud was posted on its feed Wednesday.
In the now-removed retweet, the Chinese Embassy in the U.S.’s Twitter account shared a tweet from Trump where he calls into question the election and claims the Democrats cheated.
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?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2020
Once the embassy was made aware of the tweet in the same day it was posted, the tweet was removed. The embassy issued a statement via Twitter claiming that it had been hacked and that it did not manually retweet any posts Dec. 9.
“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,” the tweet reads.
China has long been in a tense relationships with the U.S. and Trump. In early November, Beijing issued a statement criticizing the U.S. for sanctions imposed against China officials and actions taken in Hong Kong. (RELATED: Prominent Hong Kong Protest Leader Joshua Wong Sentenced For ‘Unlawful’ Anti-Government Rally)
Trump has been a harsh critic of China, citing them numerous times during his campaign and during the debates with President-elect Joe Biden.