China Calls Out Trump's "Twitter Diplomacy"

President-elect Donald Trump enjoys using social media to share his thoughts, but conducting foreign policy on Twitter is “ill-advised,” China’s state media said Tuesday.

“Engaging in ‘Twitter diplomacy’ is ill-advised,” Xinhua News Agency wrote in a commentary Tuesday.

Tweeting has become a “habit” for the incoming president, Xinhua explained.

Over the past month, Trump has targeted China in several critical tweets blasting China for manipulating its currency, engaging in unfair trading practices, militarizing the South China Sea, unlawfully seizing a U.S. naval unmanned underwater vehicle in international waters, taking advantage of the U.S., and failing to rein in North Korea.

On January 3rd Trump tweeted that "China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won't help with North Korea. Nice!"

“Trump’s tweets have sparked concern in the U.S. and around the world,” Xinhua argued in another article Wednesday.

China held up Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer’s statement in his first speech as Senate minority leader Tuesday that “America cannot afford a Twitter presidency” as an example.

Xinhua also mentioned several liberal media outlets and their complaints over Trump’s tweets, noting the president-elect’s tweets are “disrupting relations between partners and competitors.”

“It is common sense that foreign policy is not child’s play, and even less is it like doing business deals,” Xinhua asserted. “Twitter should not become an instrument of foreign policy.”

Trump’s incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer, said late last month that Trump will continue to use Twitter once he takes office.

“He has this direct pipeline to the American people, where he can talk back and forth,” Spicer revealed to the Rhode Island news outlet WPRI in a recent interview. “His use of social media in particular … is going to be something that’s never been seen before.”

“I think that’s gonna be just a really exciting part of the job,” he added. 

China, where Twitter is banned, disagrees.