President Trump and his Chinese language counterpart, Xi Jinping, had a prolonged cellphone name Wednesday by which they mentioned quite a lot of points. In a social media submit, Trump listed Taiwan as solely certainly one of a number of issues the 2 males talked about. Nonetheless, Chinese language state media targeted on the dialogue of Taiwan, noting that Xi “emphasised that the Taiwan query is crucial concern in China-U.S. relations.” In response to Beijing’s readout, Xi additionally advised Trump that China “won’t ever permit Taiwan to be separated from China” and that the USA should “deal with arms gross sales to Taiwan with excessive warning.”
Many China arms have not too long ago begun to sound the alarm concerning the rising danger that Beijing will act militarily within the coming years to carry Taiwan underneath its management. “One should think about that Xi feels emboldened by what he hears from Trump, who has usually appeared noncommittal and transactional towards Taiwan,” Mary Gallagher wrote in her WPR column this week. Gallagher additionally assessed that Xi’s current purging of China’s highest-ranking army officer, Gen. Zhang Youxia, makes struggle over Taiwan extra doubtless, as Zhang properly understood the problem of taking Taiwan and was prepared to talk frankly with Xi about these dangers in a approach that his youthful, much less skilled replacements could not.
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