A top official from US President-elect Joe Biden's team has voiced support for Australia in the wake of the country's war of words with China.
The incoming national security adviser for the US says "America will stand shoulder to shoulder" with Australia to "protect freedom and democracy".
Jake Sullivan's tweet appears to be a response to China's increasingly hostile actions towards Australia, including a tweet by a spokesman of a doctored image of an Australian soldier cutting a child's throat.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also said she’d expressed concern about the doctored image.
“It was an unfactual post, and of course that would concern us,” she told reporters.
The Chinese official's tweet came two weeks after a major report into alleged Australian war crimes accused Australian soldiers of murdering 39 Afghanistan civilians and treating prisoners with cruelty.
It also occurred amid a trade war between the two nations — in which China has slapped a 200 per cent tax on some Australian wines — and as Australia, New Zealand, the United States and other Five Eyes nations have publically chastised China for its treatment of Hong Kong.
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