Weekend Herald

China channels Trump

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Taking a page from the US President’s own playbook, China has denounced a US newspaper report that it is listening to Donald Trump’s phone calls as “fake news”, and suggested he exchange his iPhone for a cellphone made by Chinese manufactur­er Huawei.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoma­n Hua Chunying told reporters that the journalist­s behind the report in the New York Times “are sparing no efforts to win the Academy Award for best screenplay”. “Firstly, the New York Times should know that such a report just provides another piece of evidence that the NYT is making fake news,” Hua said at a daily news briefing.

“Secondly, I suggest they replace their iPhone with Huawei ones if they are really concerned about security issues,” Hua said.

A 2012 report by a congressio­nal panel said Huawei’s equipment was a security risk.

If the US is still concerned about security, Trump could “abandon all modern communicat­ion devices and cut off contact with the outside completely”, she said.

The Times reported that American intelligen­ce reports said Chinese and Russian spies are listening in when Trump calls friends on one of his iPhones and is using the informatio­n to try to influence him and impact administra­tion policy.

Trump pushed back against the idea that he uses insecure cellphones, tweeting that he only uses government phones “and have only one seldom used government cellphone”.

AP

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