US President Donald Trump not raising the issue of Taiwan in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Thursday alleviated concerns about potential US concessions to Beijing, but also drew mixed responses from politicians and experts.
Trump and Xi met for about 100 minutes on the sidelines of the APEC summit in South Korea with the discussion reportedly revolving around trade, mineral exports and fentanyl controls.
US Senator Elissa Slotkin, who in May cosponsored the Taiwan Non-Discrimination Act, told the Central News Agency that she had hoped Trump would reiterate the US’ stance on Taiwan instead of being silent on the issue.
Photo: AP
Many people were concerned that he would change US policy and she wished Trump had made some reassuring comments, Slotkin said.
US Senator Lindsey Graham said that he spoke with Trump briefly after the exchange with Xi, although he was not privy to the contents of the meeting.
Taiwan commands broad and deep support in the US, Graham said.
US Senator Jack Reed said he was not surprised that Trump did not mention Taiwan during the meeting, adding that the US leader likely avoided broaching controversial or difficult topics in favor of dealing with easier problems.
US Senator Mark Kelly said he was similarly unsurprised that Trump avoided talking about Taiwan.
US Senator Ted Cruz, who sponsored the Taiwan Symbols of Sovereignty Act, said he could not comment on the meeting before reading a transcript of the conversation.
Richard Haass, former president of the New York-based Council of Foreign Relations think tank, told NBC news show Morning Joe that he was more surprised by Beijing’s silence on Taiwan than Trump’s.
Taiwan makes up the core of Beijing’s foreign policy agenda and should have been impossible to avoid in a high-level discussion between US and Chinese senior officials, Haass said.
It would be highly interesting if Trump told the truth in stating that Xi did not mention Taiwan during the talks, as that suggests Beijing wanted to focus on the economy and achieve some kind of truce with the US, he said.
Xi does not think about his historical legacy in terms of rare earths or fentanyl, but Taiwan, Haass said, adding that China is sure to discuss Taiwan with Trump in the future.
The Wall Street Journal in a report published shortly before the meeting said that Xi might push for Trump to declare that the US opposes Taiwanese independence, which would be a stronger statement than former US president Bill Clinton’s comment that Washington would not support independence.
Meanwhile, Trump denied that Taiwan was not part of the talks and announced that tariffs on Chinese goods would be lowered, while Beijing pledged to resume buying US soy beans, restart exports of rare earths and crack down on the fentanyl trade.
Former US trade representative Peter Cowhey said that preliminary information about Trump and Xi’s meeting suggests that the US was not interested in talking about Taiwan amid the trade negotiations.
That would be a positive development for Taiwan, but the absence of information means that more observation is required to form a clear picture, Cowhey said.
Washington’s negotiation strategy could be to decouple talks about Taiwan from the trade dispute, indicating that the US is taking a new and more cautious approach in dealing with China, he said.
The US might be implying that even a good outcome from trade talks would not change Washington’s stance on Taiwan, he said, adding that the silence might have been a message.
Nations that Trump visited in his visit to Asia likely sighed in collective relief, as things went a lot better than they had feared, he said.
Denis Wilder, former director for China at the US National Security Council in the administration of former US president George W. Bush, said that it was a “very good thing” for Taiwan that Trump did not discuss matters concerning the nation with Xi.
Trump’s staff might have told China ahead of time that the US was not interested in talking about Taiwan, or Xi might have avoided bringing up the subject because he knew he would not like the response, Wilder said.
Xi could have appeared weak if Trump had rebuffed a Chinese demand about Taiwan, he said.
Former US diplomat Kurt Tong, who is a managing partner at the Asia Group, said that Beijing typically would bring up Taiwan to ensure that the US knew its policy stance on it remained firm.
Given the meeting’s brevity, it was possible that Xi simply ran out of time to talk about Taiwan, Tong said.
There was no indication that the two sides were willing to engage in negotiations on matters outside of ongoing disputes over trade and technology, he said.
Brookings Institution researcher Richard Bush said that the two leaders had little time to go over matters, as interpreters used up close to half of time in the interaction.
Even if Taiwan was mentioned during the talks, it was unlikely that the conversation went beyond a rote recitation of the two governments’ well-trod official stances on the issue, he said.
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