China was silent yesterday after US president-elect Donald Trump’s latest Twitter tirade, with analysts suggesting Beijing was scrambling to work out what the outburst could mean for relations with Washington.
Reaction from both government and official media was unusually subdued after the real-estate tycoon lashed out on social media, accusing China of military expansionism and manipulating its currency.
“Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into their country (the US doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea?” Trump said on Twitter, adding: “I don’t think so!”
The taunt came two days after Trump provoked a rebuke from China by accepting a call from President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
US vice president-elect Mike Pence played down the call’s significance, telling NBC’s Meet the Press that it “was a courtesy call” and saying any new policy on China would be decided after Trump’s inauguration.
However, the Washington Post on Sunday reported that the call had been in the works for weeks, intended to signal a major shift in US policies toward Taiwan and China. The article cited people involved in planning the call.
China had “no comment” on the motivation behind the tweets, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) told reporters yesterday.
“We do not comment on his personality. We focus on his policies, especially his policies towards China,” Kang said, adding that economic relations between the countries had been “mutually beneficial.”
Although Trump’s comments were uncharacteristically sharp for a US leader, the initial response from state media was restrained. By late afternoon, the comments still had not been reported by Xinhua news agency.
However, it did issue a comment piece warning against focusing on Trump’s “sensational claims.”
It was “hasty to draw a pessimistic conclusion” about his intentions, Xinhua said, urging Trump to resist “light-headed calls for provocative and damaging moves on China.”
Even the Global Times merely said that the “bombardment” was the first time Trump had “expressed a clear view” on the South China Sea — a strategically vital area contested by China and its neighbors, including Taiwan.
Chinese leaders, who have long counted on stable, predictable relationships with US leaders, are “probably scrambling to figure out how to respond” to Trump, said Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) will want to “avoid being seen as weak,” especially as he faces a major Chinese Communist Party congress next year, she said.
Beijing was “very much on guard against the future administration, but won’t have any formal reaction” while US President Barack Obama remains in office, especially since Trump has not yet formed his Cabinet or chosen a secretary of state, Renmin University of China professor of international studies Jin Canrong (金燦榮) said.
He predicted Trump would moderate once he takes office, but added the president-elect “is a trendy and impulsive man who does Twitter very well, which helped him during the campaign, but when transferred to the international arena, it will cause lots of trouble.”
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