Chinese Newspaper Chief Uses Twitter to Suggest Killing US ‘Invaders’ in Taiwan

Screen Capture of Hu Xijin

The head of China’s state-backed Global Times newspaper took to Twitter on Thursday to suggest the country deploy an airstrike to kill American “invaders” in Taiwan.

“Why just two dozen members?” Global Times editor in chief Hu Xijin wrote in the mid-day missive. “Why secretly? The US should send 240 servicemen publicly, in US military uniform, and make public where they are stationed. See whether the PLA will launch a targeted air strike to eliminate those US invaders!”

Xijin included a link to a Wall Street Journal report published earlier in the day about American Marines and a special-operations unit secretly deployed to Taiwan to assist with training the country’s military. The former Chinese territory was established in the late 1940s by Chinese refugees who fled in the wake of the Communist Party’s violent takeover led by Mao Zedong, but China has denied Taiwan’s right to self-governance.

The Global Times, which is backed by China’s regime, last made headlines in July for criticizing NBC News during the Olympic Games. The network aired a map of China that did not display Taiwan or the South China Sea — another region over which China holds disputed territorial claims — leading the publication to say NBC had engaged in the “wrong behavior of using an incomplete map.”