President Xi Jinping urged his US counterpart Donald Trump to abide by Washington\u2019s decades-old \u201cone-China\u201d policy during a phone call on Monday morning as tensions between the two countries resurfaced over Taiwan, disputes in the South China Sea…<\/b>
\nPresident Xi Jinping urged his US counterpart Donald Trump to abide by Washington\u2019s decades-old \u201cone-China\u201d policy during a phone call on Monday morning as tensions between the two countries resurfaced over Taiwan, disputes in the South China Sea and how to handle North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons programme.
Xi said US-China relations have been affected by negative factors since the two men met for the first time at the Mar-a-Lago summit in Florida in April, the state broadcaster China Central Television reported.
\u201cWe attach great importance to the US government\u2019s reaffirmation of the one-China policy and hope the US side will properly handle the Taiwan problem by adhering to the one-China principle and the three communiqu\u00e9s between the two sides, \u201d Xi was quoted as saying.
The call, just days ahead of a planned second meeting between the two leaders at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany later this week, came after the Trump administration agreed a US$1.4 billion arms sales package with Taiwan.
China considers the island to be a breakaway Chinese province and tries to deter all countries from having formal ties with the island. US defence ties with Taiwan are a particularly sensitive issue.
The phone call also came as the Trump administration has become increasingly frustrated with Beijing over its perceived lack of progress in putting pressure on North Korea to rein in its weapons programme.
China condemns \u2018serious provocation\u2019 posed by US warship near South China Sea island
The White House said in a statement that US President Donald Trump urged Beijing to step up pressure on North Korea during their telephone conversation.
\u201cBoth leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearised Korean peninsula. President Trump reiterated his determination to seek more balanced trade relations with America\u2019s trading partners, \u201d the White House said.
The terse statement did not provide further details of the call or say if Trump managed to persuade Xi to endorse his approach of exerting maximum pressure on North Korea, including a slew of further economic and trade sanctions.
Beijing has lodged protests following Washington\u2019s announcement of the Trump administration\u2019s first arms sales to Taiwan.
China has also protested against the blacklisting of a small Chinese bank accused of illicit dealings with North Korea.
Beijing was further infuriated last week with a bill approved by the US Senate Armed Services Committee that would allow regular stops by American naval vessels to Taiwan\u2019s ports.
Tensions have also been raised between the two countries over China\u2019s assertive claims to islands in the South China Sea.
US decision to sell arms to Taiwan \u2018violated consensus\u2019 reached by Xi, Trump in Florida
The USS Stethem, a guided-missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island, part of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, on Sunday.
It was the second freedom-of-navigation operation conducted under Trump, following a drill in late May in which a US warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, which is also claimed by China.
Trump talked to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by phone as well as Xi.
The call was focused on the threat posed by North Korea\u2019s accelerated nuclear weapons programme, the White House said.
\u201cThey reaffirmed that the United States-Japan Alliance stands ready to defend and respond to any threat or action taken by North Korea, \u201d the White House statement said.
Analysts said Beijing may in future have to deal with a more confrontational approach from the Trump administration, which appears to be using Taiwan as leverage against Beijing.
The former Taiwanese deputy defence minister Lin Chong-pin said US moves signalled Trump was likely to shift his China policy towards a harder approach.
\u201cApparently, Trump still wants to step up pressure on Beijing in exchange for China\u2019s support on North Korea. But given Trump\u2019s track record of being unconventional and unpredictable, it remains to be seen how far he will go to get tough on China, \u201d he said.
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Robert Daly, the director of the Kissinger Institute on China at the Wilson Centre in the US, said Washington\u2019s recent critique of China\u2019s human rights record, its imposition of secondary sanctions on China, the arms sales to Taiwan and pending tariffs on Chinese steel exports to the US may represent a hardening of Trump\u2019s views on China.
\u201cThey are a return to normalcy for American China policy. This hardening is in keeping with China\u2019s long-term expectations for the relationship, but it disappoints China\u2019s unrealistic short-term hopes for managing the Trump administration, \u201d he said. \u201cOf course, the Trump administration\u2019s return to the mean in China relations could be as short-lived as its experiments with scrapping the one-China policy and cosying up to Xi Jinping. The relationship remains dangerously unstable.\u201d
Richard Bush, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the timing of the US moves was intriguing.
\u201cThe steps announced this week occurred a week after the first diplomatic and security dialogue between China and the US and [days] before Trump\u2019s meeting with Xi in Hamburg. In a way, Washington is \u2018laying the table\u2019 for the summit, \u201d he said.<\/p>\n