United States President Donald Trump has said that his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping has assured him that Beijing will not attempt to unify Taiwan with mainland China while the Republican leader is in office.
Trump said on Sunday that the long-contentious issue of Taiwan “never even came up as a subject” when he met with Xi in South Korea on Thursday for their first face-to-face meeting in six years. The meeting largely focused on US-China trade tensions.
“He has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘We would never do anything while President Trump is president’, because they know the consequences,” Trump said in an interview with the CBS 60 Minutes programme that aired on Sunday.
Asked in the interview whether he would order US forces into action if China moved militarily on Taiwan, Trump demurred.
The US, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan – trying not to tip its hand on whether the US would come to the island’s aid in such a scenario.
“You’ll find out if it happens, and he understands the answer to that,” said Trump, referring to Xi.
But Trump declined to spell out what he meant in the interview conducted on Friday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, adding: “I can’t give away my secrets. The other side knows.”
US officials have long been concerned about the possibility of China using military force against Taiwan, the self-governed island democracy Beijing claims as part of its territory.
The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which has governed US relations with the island, does not require the US to step in militarily if China invades but makes it US policy to ensure Taiwan has the resources to defend itself and prevent any unilateral change of status by Beijing.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, did not respond directly to a query from The Associated Press news agency about whether Trump has received any assurances from Xi or Chinese officials about Taiwan. He insisted in a statement that China “will never allow any person or force to separate Taiwan from China in any way”.
“The Taiwan question is China’s internal affair, and it is the core of China’s core interests. How to resolve the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese people ourselves, and only the Chinese people can decide it,” the statement added.
The White House also did not provide further details about when Xi or Chinese officials conveyed to Trump that military action on Taiwan was off the table for the duration of the Republican’s presidency.
The 60 Minutes interview was Trump’s first appearance on the show since he settled a lawsuit this summer with CBS News over its interview with then-Vice-President Kamala Harris. Trump alleged that the interview had been deceptively edited to benefit the Democratic Party before the 2024 presidential election. Trump initially sought $10bn in damages, later raising the claim to $20bn.
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