CHINA / SOCIETY
Iranian and US embassies launch round two of 'war of words' on China's social media
Published: Jun 07, 2020 06:14 PM

Photo: Screenshot of the post of Iranian embassy in China on Sina Weibo.


The Iranian and US embassies in Beijing were engaged in a verbal fight on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media on Saturday, for a second time since January. Chinese netizens stood by and joked that they felt like they were judges in this battleground. 

The US embassy posted an article about Iran's new national plan to tame inflation, mocking it for simply consisting of dropping a few zeros and "Voila! Problem solved!"

In response, the Iranian embassy said that US solution to the economic crisis was to print money like crazy, its solution to the COVID-19 epidemic was to pass the buck and withdraw from global organizations, and its solution to racial issues was to kneel on the neck. A video was also attached to the post of two police officers shoving a 75-year-old protester in New York City to the ground on Thursday. 

Interestingly, the US embassy's post was made at 15:21, while the Iran embassy's was at 21:15.

Weibo users who observed the fight were amused by the Chinese-language war of words, joking that they felt like a judge on the battleground of Chinese social media, with some even discussing whose Chinese was better. 

This was the second time that Weibo has seen a verbal fight break out between the two embassies. 

In January, the two embassies engaged in a back and forth of fire-breathing posts on Weibo after Iran attacked US military bases in Iraq in retaliation to the killing of Iranian major general Qasem Sleimani in drone strikes on January 3.

After seeing the second round of the battle between the two old rivals on over the weekend, Weibo users brought up the same joke that was widely circulated online after January's bout: "The two embassies are just two kilometers away from each other in Beijing's foreign embassy zone. Why don't the ambassadors confront each other fist-to-fist in real life instead of online?"

"This looks more like a serial. These new followers they have seen under their Weibo accounts are all loyal viewers," commented one netizen, which received more than 500 likes.