Trump and Xi to meet again after Xi says Taiwan mishaps could link 'dangerous zone'
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U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet again on Friday to wrap up a two-day state visit that has featured lavish deals and business deals — but also a stark warning from Xi that mishandling the Taiwan issue could put U.S.-China relations “in a very dangerous place.”
Trump is the first US president to visit China, America's biggest economic rival, since his visit in 2017 during his first term. He was hoping for tangible results that could improve his approval ratings ahead of the crucial mid-term elections in November.
The two leaders were due to have tea and lunch before Trump flew back to the United States.
“We hope our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever!” Trump wrote in a social media post early Friday.
The summit was aimed at preserving a fragile trade deal when the leaders last met in October: Trump imposed triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods, and Xi backed away from a key rare earth squeeze.
With the war in Iran still unresolved, and the Strait of Hormuz still effectively closed, US President Donald Trump has arrived in China in a weakened state for an all-important summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping – Trump's first since 2017, when he was his first president.
Trump is also expected to urge China to convince Iran to make a deal with Washington to end the war that Trump helped start, but which is unpopular with American voters. He went to Beijing with a weak hand after US courts limited his ability to impose tariffs at will, and as inflation fueled by the Iran war made him politically vulnerable at home.
Beijing has so far shown little public interest in US requests for greater involvement in conflict resolution in Iran.
A brief US summary of Thursday's talks highlighted what the White House called the leaders' shared desire to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway from Iran through which a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas flows regularly, and Xi's apparent interest in buying American oil to reduce China's reliance on Middle Eastern supplies.
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Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity that China has agreed to order 200 Boeing jets, its first purchase of US-made jets in nearly a decade. That total was much lower than markets had expected. Media reports had suggested the plane maker was nearing a deal to sell 500 or more planes to China, and Boeing shares fell more than four percent after the comments were published.
A warning from Xi
Xi's remarks on Taiwan, an island ruled by democracy Beijing said, represented a sharp, if unprecedented, warning during a lavish summit that appeared friendly and relaxed.
China's foreign ministry said they arrived at a closed meeting that lasted more than two hours.
Taiwan, just 80 kilometers from China's coast, has long been a flashpoint in US-China relations, with Beijing refusing to ban the use of military force to control the island and the United States bound by law to provide Taipei with means of self-defense.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is accompanying Trump to China, told NBC News that Taiwan was discussed, saying the Chinese “always bring it up … we always clarify our position and move on to other topics.”
US President Donald Trump is going to China on Tuesday, making a trip that was planned for March but was canceled after the US and Israel went to war with Iran. China is a major buyer of Iranian oil. It is expected that the question of Taiwan's independence will be raised in this meeting as China considers this area as its own.
“America's policy on the Taiwan issue has not changed as of today,” Rubio added.
Trump did not answer a reporter's question about whether the leaders had discussed Taiwan when he and Xi posed for photos at the Temple of Heaven, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
At a lavish dinner on Thursday, Xi called China's relationship with the US the most important in the world and added: “We must work on it and not undermine it.”
A jailed Chinese critic has been raised
When asked about Hong Kong's most outspoken China critic, media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February on two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces and one count of publishing seditious literature, Rubio said Trump made the case against Xi.
“The president keeps raising that case and a few others, and obviously we're hoping to get a good response on that,” Rubio told NBC News.
“We would be open to any plan that would work for them, as long as they are given freedom,” he said of Lai, who has denied all charges against him.
A spokesperson for China's foreign ministry, when asked about Lai, previously said that Hong Kong issues are an internal matter for China.
