Chinese online retailers reacted almost as swiftly as US President Joe Biden to the dramatic shooting of his election rival Donald Trump.
Former President Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt at around 6:15 pm local time on Saturday in Pennsylvania. The Associated Press released an iconic photo of a fist-waving Trump at 6:31 pm.
Biden made his first public comment on the shooting around 8 pm, by which time Chinese manufacturers were already preparing to produce T-shirts featuring an image of a defiant Trump.
According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the first batch of T-shirts went on sale on Taobao, a popular Chinese e-commerce platform, at 8.40pm – before most governments around the world had scrambled together a response.
Also read: Who is Thomas Matthew Crooks? 20-year-old gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump
People are already trying to profit from the apparent assassination attempt on former President and leading Republican nominee Donald Trump, says a report published in Fox10.
SCMP quoted Li Jinwei, a 25-year-old Taobao seller, who had her T-shirts on her online shelves by breakfast time in China: “We put the T-shirts on Taobao as soon as we saw the news about the shooting, though we hadn’t even printed them, and within three hours we saw more than 2,000 orders from both China and the US.”
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