President Donald Trump spoke with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping by telephone on Monday and said he has accepted an invitation from Xi to visit Beijing in April for a face-to-face meeting.
The Chinese government officially announced the phone call between Trump and Xi first, describing it as an upbeat and friendly conversation about issues including Ukraine, Taiwan, and international trade.
“As far as I know, the call was initiated by the U.S. side, and the atmosphere was positive, friendly, and constructive. Communication between the two heads of state on issues of common concern is very important for the stable development of China-U.S. relations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Tuesday morning.
According to the Foreign Ministry, Xi stressed during the call that China’s authority over Taiwan is an “integral part of the postwar international order,” and suggested the U.S. and China should “jointly safeguard the victory of World War 2.”
China is currently embroiled in a diplomatic feud with Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae saying her country would view a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as an existential threat. Xi was unsubtly hinting at this crisis by mentioning the war Imperial Japan lost in 1945.
China’s summary of the phone call claimed Trump indicated he “understands how important the Taiwan question is to China,” but Trump said nothing about Taiwan when he wrote a Truth Social post about his conversation with Xi on Monday evening.
“I just had a very good telephone call with President Xi, of China. We discussed many topics including Ukraine/Russia, Fentanyl, Soybeans and other Farm Products, etc.,” Trump wrote.
“Our relationship with China is extremely strong! This call was a follow up to our highly successful meeting in South Korea, three weeks ago. Since then, there has been significant progress on both sides in keeping our agreements current and accurate,” the president continued.
“Now we can set our sights on the big picture. To that end, President Xi invited me to visit Beijing in April, which I accepted, and I reciprocated where he will be my guest for a State Visit in the U.S. later in the year,” he announced.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a Monday evening interview with CNBC that both a major deal on Chinese soybean purchases, and an assistance package for American farmers, would be announced “probably in the next week or two.”
Rollins was slightly less enthusiastic than Trump’s Truth Social post about the soybean deal with China, noting there was a “significant way to go” to complete the agreement, but she said she believed China would honor the purchase commitment Xi made to Trump when they met in South Korea last month.
“Every sign is, their commitment remains true that they will indeed buy, or purchase, 12 million metric tons or put the order in. Even if the purchase order comes in before the end of December, those will move early next year,” she said.
Interestingly, the Chinese Foreign Ministry dodged questions about which side initiated the phone call between Xi and Trump, but the radical leftist New York Times (NYT) reported on Monday that Xi made the “unusual move” of beginning the conversation. Chinese leaders very rarely make the first move in such exchanges.
The NYT noted that while neither Trump nor White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned Xi’s remarks about Taiwan in their summaries of the phone call, Trump placed a call to Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi a few hours after speaking with Xi.
Takaichi told reporters that Trump “provided an explanation of the recent state of U.S.-China relations” during their friendly conversation, and the two leaders “exchanged a wide range of views on strengthening the Japan-U.S. alliance, as well as on the situation and various challenges facing the Indo-Pacific region.”
“President Trump told me that I am a very close friend of his and that I should feel free to call him at any time. As these are diplomatic exchanges, I will refrain from going into further detail about the contents of the discussion,” she said.
Analysts said Xi’s phone call seemed like an effort to enlist Trump’s assistance with climbing down from the China-Japan feud, which has seen China make some belligerent statements that would be difficult to walk back. For her part, Takaichi has refused to retract her comments.
On Friday, Beijing sent a letter to the United Nations that accused Takaichi of committing a “grave violation of international law” when she suggested Japan could respond with military force to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
“It is shocking that Japan’s current leaders have publicly sent the wrong signal of attempting military intervention in the Taiwan issue, said things they shouldn’t have said, and crossed a red line that should not have been touched,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday in a statement that railed against “the resurgence of Japanese militarism.”
