Chinese Ambassador's veiled 'bully' attack at Donald Trump

Xu Feihong, the Chinese Ambassador to India, on Thursday, slammed the United States for imposing tariffs against several countries, including India. Without naming Donald Trump, Xu Feihong took a veiledjibe at the US President. "Give the bully an inch, he will take a mile," the Chinese envoy to India wrote on X.

Xu Feihong also quoted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as saying: “Using tariffs as a weapon to suppress other countries violates the UN Charter, undermines WTO rules and is both unpopular and unsustainable.”

Donald Trump this month announced two tranches of 25 per cent tariffs on Indian exports to the US over New Delhi's purchase of Russian oil and weapons.

India called the tariffs unfortunate and questioned the US for sparing other countries with similar Russian energy imports.

The Chinese envoy's remarks came hours after Donald Trump threatened China with tariffs for buying Russian energy exports.

China is the biggest importer of Russian oil.

"It may happen, I don't know, I can't tell you yet, we did it with India, and we are doing it probably with a couple of others, one of them could be China," Donald Trump said in the White House.

In June this year,China was the largest buyer of Russian oil. At 38 percent, India was in second place, followed by Türkiye.

Despite the purchase, only India was penalised by the Donald Trump administration, not Turkiye or China.