US president-elect Donald Trump said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that he would not commit to the “one China” policy until he sees progress from Beijing in its currency and trade practices.
In excerpts from the hour-long interview published on Friday, Trump, when asked if he supported the “one China” policy toward Taiwan that has underpinned US relations with Beijing for decades, said: “Everything is under negotiation, including ‘one China.’”
“We sold them [Taiwan] US$2 billion of military equipment last year. We can sell them US$2 billion of the latest and greatest military equipment, but we’re not allowed to accept a phone call. First of all, it would have been very rude not to accept the phone call,” Trump said in the interview.
Photo: EPA
In a previous interview with Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace last month, Trump questioned the need for Washington to stick to its “one China” policy.
“I fully understand the ‘one China’ policy, but I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘one China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” he said at the time.
Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) at the time said that the office had no comment about Trump’s remarks on the Fox show.
While in El Salvador on Friday, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), in response to reporters’ questions on concerns that Taiwan might become a bargaining chip in the relationship between the US and China, said she had heard the view.
“I feel that we are able to deal with such things and will put Taiwan’s interests first,” she said.
Trump has said he would label China a currency manipulator after he takes office.
In Friday’s interview, he said he would not take that step on his first day in the White House.
“I would talk to them first,” he said. “Certainly they are manipulators, but I’m not looking to do that.”
However, the president-elect made plain his displeasure with China’s currency practices.
“Instead of saying, ‘We’re devaluating our currency,’ they say, ‘Oh, our currency is dropping.’ It’s not dropping. They’re doing it on purpose,” the Wall Street Journal quoted him as saying. “Our companies can’t compete with them now, because our currency is strong and it’s killing us.”
In other news, a personal e-mail of former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton recently leaked by WikiLeaks suggested an adviser, Jake Sullivan, once shared with her an article titled “To save our economy, ditch Taiwan” by Paul Kane, a former international security research fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
In the article, Kane suggested that US President Barack Obama could bolster US economic security by ending its military assistance and arms sales to Taiwan, in exchange for a write-off of US$1.14 trillion in US debt held by China.
“I saw it and thought it was so clever. Let’s discuss,” said Clinton, who ran against Trump in the US presidential election last year, in the leaked e-mail.
Additional reporting by CNA and staff writer
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
TRAGEDY STRIKES TAIPEI: The suspect died after falling off a building after he threw smoke grenades into Taipei Main Station and went on a killing spree in Zhongshan A 27-year-old suspect allegedly threw smoke grenades in Taipei Main Station and then proceeded to Zhongshan MRT Station in a random killing spree that resulted in the death of the suspect and two other civilians, and seven injured, including one in critical condition, as of press time last night. The suspect, identified as a man surnamed Chang Wen (張文), allegedly began the attack at Taipei Main Station, the Taipei Fire Department said, adding that it received a report at 5:24pm that smoke grenades had been thrown in the station. One man in his 50s was rushed to hospital after a cardiac arrest
ON ALERT: Taiwan’s partners would issue warnings if China attempted to use Interpol to target Taiwanese, and the global body has mechanisms to prevent it, an official said China has stationed two to four people specializing in Taiwan affairs at its embassies in several democratic countries to monitor and harass Taiwanese, actions that the host nations would not tolerate, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, which asked him and Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to report on potential conflicts in the Taiwan Strait and military preparedness. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) expressed concern that Beijing has posted personnel from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office to its
‘ILLEGAL RULING’: The KMT and the TPP slammed the Constitutional Court judgement, saying it contravened the law and was trying to clear the way for a ‘green dictatorship’ The Constitutional Court yesterday ruled that amendments to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) passed by the Legislative Yuan last year are unconstitutional, as they contravene due legislative process and separation of powers. The Legislative Yuan on Dec. 20 last year passed amendments stipulating that no fewer than 10 grand justices must take part in deliberations of the Constitutional Court, and at least nine grand justices must agree to declare a law unconstitutional. The Executive Yuan on Jan. 2 requested that lawmakers reconsider the bill, but the Legislative Yuan, under a combined majority of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party
RSS