THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And China responds with diplomatic warnings that our Stupid As Fuck President Elect is on the verge of making serious problems real in China-US relations.

China warned President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday that he was risking a confrontation over Taiwan, even as Mr. Trump broadened the dispute with new messages on Twitter challenging Beijing’s trade policies and military activities in the South China Sea.

A front-page editorial in the overseas edition of People’s Daily, the official organ of the Communist Party of China, denounced Mr. Trump for speaking Friday with Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, warning that “creating troubles for the China-U.S. relationship is creating troubles for the U.S. itself.” The rebuke was much tougher than the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s initial response to the phone call, which broke with decades of American diplomatic practice.

For his part, Mr. Trump seemed to take umbrage at the idea that he needed China’s approval to speak with Ms. Tsai. In two posts on Twitter, he wrote: “Did China ask us if it was O.K. to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into their country (the U.S. doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don’t think so!”

China often uses the overseas edition of People’s Daily to test-run major policy pronouncements. In a pointed rejoinder to Mr. Trump, the editorial said that pushing China on Taiwan “would greatly reduce the chance to achieve the goal of making America great again.”

By going after China’s policies on trade and security, Mr. Trump appeared to be confirming his intent to take a tougher line with the Chinese leadership across a broader range of issues — and further dampened hopes in Beijing that he might step back from the campaign rhetoric he has used, including threats of punishing trade tariffs.

That could put President Xi Jinping in a difficult position, forced to choose between playing down Mr. Trump’s attacks and risking a backlash at home, or raising the stakes by pushing back more forcefully and setting China on a potential collision course with the United States, its most important trading partner.

What the Chinese will probably do is delegitimize Donny and ignore him. They will deal with and take their cues from those around him at the next level down. Neither country can afford to eliminate the One China policy but the Chinese are better able to conduct economic warfare.