The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC), mocked President Donald Trump’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday as “low-energy” and generally accused him of lying.

Trump accused China of severe intellectual property theft and global fraud in continuing to declare itself a “developing nation” despite being the world’s second-largest economy. He also offered a message of hope to the pro-democracy protesters challenging Beijing in Hong Kong, pressing the Communist Party to stop attempting to override the legal agreement that keeps Hong Kong capitalist.

“Trump’s ‘America First’ speech was widely deemed as a nationalist speech with low-energy delivery,” the People’s Daily claimed. “His speech is another example of Trump ‘gaming’ the facts to fit his narrative about the rise of China.”

The newspaper accused Trump of ignoring how communism is “making China great again” and of incorrectly blaming China for mass deindustrialization in the United States, which it instead claimed was the result of “rational economic behavior … largely driven by market forces.”

“China’s achievements derive from the hard work of the Chinese people and the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, and sweat and even tears are behind China’s rise to greatness,” the People’s Daily declared.

Blaming China’s distortion of its economic reality to benefit from globalization at the expense of the United States, the People’s Daily argued, was “a stretch of the imagination.”

“A lie told a thousand times does not become truth. The model that China has embraced values globalization, reform, and opening to the world,” the propaganda outlet asserted. “China plays by the rules of the WTO and other international multilateral organizations, which were mostly designed by the West.”

“We should understand that China and the United States are different. They have different histories, different cultures, different political systems, and different development path,” the newspaper insisted. “The key to harmony is how to correctly understand and handle them.”

The People’s Daily recommended that “if Trump is serious about fixing America,” he should stop “bullying” China by pointing out its outrageous intellectual property theft and unethical economic policies.

In his speech before fellow world leaders in New York on Tuesday, Trump noted that “the most important difference” between his administration’s policies and those of his predecessors is his realistic approach to China. The entry of China into the World Trade Organization as a developing country, he noted, was a move intended to “compel China to liberalize its economy and strengthen protections to provide things that were unacceptable to us, and for private property and for the rule of law.”

The theory that including China in global trade as a communist nation would liberalize it “has been tested and proven completely wrong,” Trump asserted.

“Not only has China declined to adopt promised reforms, it has embraced an economic model dependent on massive market barriers, heavy state subsidies, currency manipulation, product dumping, forced technology transfers, and the theft of intellectual property and also trade secrets on a grand scale,” the president said.

Trump went on to warn China to “honor its binding treaty” with Hong Kong and protect its “freedom, legal system, and democratic ways of life.” The Chinese government, through its proxies running Hong Kong, have actively attempted to crush those institutions – first through the attempted imposition of a law allowing the communists to extradite political dissidents, and later with police brutality against those who dared protest the law. Trump once again reminded the world that the violence against protesters was on the back of Communist Party dictator Xi Jinping – who has refused to publicly remark on the matter – urging him to act as a “great leader” and not violate the rights of the protesters.

In addition to the outrage from the People’s Daily, the Chinese regime formally disparaged Trump’s remarks as “false” through its foreign ministry. Spokesman Geng Shuang dismissed the veracity of Trump’s speech and added, “The U.S. should look at China’s development with an open, inclusive and win-win mentality and meet China halfway.” He also directed reporters to remarks by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, also in New York to address the General Assembly.

“Seeking hegemony has never been in the Chinese DNA. China has no intention of playing a ‘game of thrones’ on the world stage,” Wang said on Tuesday.

“On the claim that US policy has failed to change China and that it’s time to revert to a containment policy, Wang said that the idea of molding others according to one’s wish is wrong and will never work. Seventy years on, it is important for the US to avoid picking another wrong fight with the wrong country,” the Global Times, another government propaganda outlet, quoted Wang as saying.

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