New Delhi: It was around 6.15 pm in the American state of Pennsylvania that former US President Donald Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.
Within a couple of hours (around 8 am China time), Chinese manufacturers were in the process of getting T-shirts printed with an image of a defiant Trump leaving the scene of attack.
An hour later, around 9 am China time, popular Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao had put the first batch of Trump souvenir T-shirts on sale, reported South China Morning Post.
In other words, the T-shirts were on the online portal shelves by breakfast time in China.
That was the speed with which the likes of Li Jinwei, a 25-year-old Taobao seller, operated. And there were ready takers too.
“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,” she said.
All Li had to do was download one of the viral images from Internet and press print.
Li’s factory — in China’s northern province of Hebei – takes an average of one minute to finish a T-shirt, according to scmp.com.
Taobao is among several Chinese apps banned in India.
