(Trade deal) In 'win win' tone, state media presents agreement of equals

US President Donald Trump’s remarks at the signing of the phase one trade deal were given almost 20 minutes of live airtime on China's state television, broadcasting in the middle of the night, Bloomberg reports.

State broadcaster CCTV and its English network CGTN carried a live feed from around 00:45 a.m. Thursday local time, with the former providing a simultaneous translation into Chinese.

The broadcast shifted back to the studio once the U.S. leader began thanking domestic allies and discussing local issues such as the impeachment trial, with the anchors taking the opportunity to praise China’s negotiators.

State newspaper People’s Daily sent alerts via its app during the event, pushing the news of Trump and Vice Premier Liu He sitting down to sign the deal out at around 2:00 a.m. local time.

Most of the provisions in the document, which pauses the tariff war between the two nations, concern actions that China must take to avoid further penalties and address U.S. concerns over its trading practices. Beijing has worked to present it domestically as an equal treaty.

Shortly after the signing, CCTV published a commentary on its app arguing that the deal has two salient features: balance and equality and being a mutual “win-win.''

Early morning today, the People’s Daily made a similar argument in an article published via WeChat, a social-media platform.

The agreement is generally in line with China’s direction of advancing reforms and expanding opening up, and in line with China’s intrinsic needs of high-quality economic growth, it said.

Global Times, a Communist Party tabloid, said in an editorial that both sides “are not so satisfied” with the phase one deal, but the two should cherish “the hard-fought agreement.” It would be “shallow” to debate who won or lost, it said, calling for restraint in “nitpicking of the agreement and bad-mouthing future trade negotiations.''

China Daily, another flagship newspaper, cheered the deal as “a small, but positive step” forward in an editorial today. It highlighted differences that still need to be resolved, cautioning that elation over the signing was quickly tempered by suspicions that it would not take much to scupper the deal.