Chinese Embassy retweets Trump’s false claims of election fraud, then backtracks.

The Twitter account of the Chinese Embassy in the United States on Wednesday shared a post by President Trump falsely claiming that the Democrats “cheated” in the election and that the results should be overturned — only to undo the retweet hours later and claim that its account had been hacked.

The disputes and legal battles in the aftermath of the election have been a fixation for Chinese state news outlets, who have heralded the polarization as evidence of American decline. But the initial retweet on Wednesday appeared to be the first time that an official Chinese social media account had directly amplified Mr. Trump’s inaccurate claims about election fraud.

The embassy’s subsequent attempts to distance itself from the post showed the precarious position that China has tried to occupy during the transition: not provoking Mr. Trump, who has continued to try to punish China during his final weeks in office, while hoping for a reset with president-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Chinese officials did not acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory for several days after the election was called, and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, did not send his congratulations to him until more than two weeks afterward.

Mr. Trump has introduced a slew of new measures against China recently, including sanctions and a travel ban on Chinese officials this week. On Thursday, China struck back by announcing that U.S. diplomatic passport holders would no longer be able to enter Hong Kong and Macau without visas.

Mr. Trump’s tweet was the latest in the president’s long string of false claims about the election. After claiming that the Democrats had acted inappropriately, Mr. Trump wrote, “How can a Country be run like this?”

Chinese state-backed newspapers have gleefully asked similar questions. “So-called US-style democracy has descended into a joke,” a front-page headline in one paper read after the election.

But hours after the embassy shared the post, it disappeared from the account. Shortly after, the embassy tweeted that it had been hacked, adding, “For clarification, the Embassy didn’t do any retweeting on Dec. 9.”

It was not the first time that official Chinese Twitter accounts had stepped back after appearing to revel in the American electoral chaos. Last month, People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, mocked a tweet from Mr. Trump falsely claiming that he had won the election, adding “HaHa” and a laughing face emoji. The tweet was later deleted.