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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian sparked outrage by posting a staging of a man dressed as an Australian soldier holding a bloody knife around the neck of an Afghan child.
The post came just days after a report on war crimes allegedly committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.
Morrison called the tweet, which came from an official Chinese government account, “a scandalous and disgusting insult” to the Australian military and asked Twitter to delete it. “It’s outrageous and unjustifiable. The Chinese government should be ashamed of this post,” Scott Morrison said of the tweet, which sparked thousands of reactions within hours.
Relations between Canberra and Beijing have steadily deteriorated in recent months. China, Australia’s largest trading partner, recently reacted to Canberra by suspending imports of a large number of products, including beef, barley and timber.
The state-controlled Chinese press has also repeatedly attacked Australia in several areas. For its part, Australia excluded Chinese telecom giant Huawei from its 5G rollout and called for an independent investigation into the origin of the coronavirus.
A Chinese government spokesman accompanied the tweet with a text saying “shocked by the killing of Afghan civilians and prisoners (committed) by Australian soldiers”. “We strongly condemn such acts and ask that they be held accountable,” he added.
This post is the latest example of a new type of aggressive communication from the Chinese government to foreign countries, AFP notes. Although stranded in China, diplomats have sometimes vehemently and controversially defended their government’s position on Twitter since last year.
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