- author, Kelly Ng
- role, BBC News
A Chinese e-commerce platform has removed sales of a T-shirt featuring an image of Donald Trump pumping his fist in the air moments after he was shot.
The T-shirts, which went on sale within hours of the shooting, were available for purchase on popular e-commerce sites such as Taobao and JD.com.
It is unclear why the listing was removed, but China's internet is tightly controlled and content deemed “sensitive” is regularly removed.
The assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania last Saturday sparked widespread online debate, with related hashtags trending on the X-like platform Weibo.
Enterprising Chinese retailers sprung into action, printing the first T-shirts and starting selling them online less than three hours after the shooting.
A cached image on Taobao, one of China's biggest e-commerce sites, lists the T-shirt as costing 39 yuan ($9, £7).
The 25-year-old Taobao retailer told the South China Morning Post that he received more than 2,000 orders for the T-shirts just three hours after they went on sale, most of them from China and the United States.
Trump has garnered online attention in China for years, for both good and bad reasons.
Trump's trade war with Beijing during his presidency infuriated the Chinese government and many Chinese citizens, but it also earned him some supporters, including a group of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. who have translated all of Trump's tweets through the X-account @Trump_Chinese. Launched in September 2018, the account has garnered more than 344,000 followers over the years.
There's also a popular online joke that plays on the Chinese translation of Trump's name, “Chuan.” Trump is often referred to as “Chuan Django,” which translates to “Trump — the builder of our country,” as a way of mocking Trump's role in helping set China on the path to superpower status.
Chinese entrepreneurs have been capitalizing on the interest in him for years.
T-shirts featuring Trump were removed from China after the shooting, but online retailers still sell a wide range of Trump-related merchandise, including socks and mugs featuring his likeness and red hats with his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”
Retailers around the world are also profiting from the assassination attempt.
Similar T-shirts are also available on Lazada and Shopee, popular e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia.
Lazada is owned by Chinese technology giant Alibaba Group, which also owns Taobao.
Online photos show similar T-shirts being sold in the US, some with captions – one saying “Leaders never die” and another “Bulletproof”.
