Among China's most surprising responses to the trade war has been its reluctance to use its vast state media empire to rally the home front. That's changed since U.S. President Donald Trump's latest tariff barrage.
In recent days, the once-banned phrase "trade war" has roared back into widespread use in Chinese media. Meanwhile, official news outlets gave high-profile play to commentaries urging unified resistance to foreign pressure, including an editorial from the nationalist Global Times calling the trade dispute a "people's war" and threat to all of China.
Such sentiments have found an eager audience, with a state television video vowing a "fight to the end" attracting more than 3 billion views since Monday. The clip was the most-read piece on China's Twitter-like social media platform Weibo earlier Tuesday.