U.S. Republican Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, criticized Chinese President Xi Jinping for "willful hypocrisy" on Thursday for ratcheting up its "economic retaliation" against South Korea for the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery.

In a statement on “Chinese bullying of South Korea,” McCain attacked Xi for delivering a “hollow lecture” on the importance of free trade, referring to Xi’s speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Tuesday.