Trump says Taiwan was only briefly discussed at summit with Xi

US President Donald Trump has sought to downplay discussions about Taiwan with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying the issue was addressed only briefly during their summit in Washington last week. “We didn’t talk about it too much. Right now, it’s fine,” Trump said on Saturday.

He added that Xi understood his position, without providing further details about their exchange. The comments followed reports that Xi had pressed Trump to take an explicit position against Taiwan independence. Such a commitment would go beyond Washington’s established wording that it does not support independence.

US ambassador to Beijing David Perdue said in a CNBC interview that there had been no change in the US position. He said the policy remained based on the Taiwan Relations Act, three joint communiques and six assurances, and that Washington wanted peace across the Taiwan Strait. Perdue said the United States did not support independence and believed Xi had received that message.

Washington does not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but opposes any attempt to take the self-ruled island by force and is committed to providing it with weapons, according to the source material. Taiwanese Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Chih-chung welcomed the signals from Washington, saying peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait were in the global interest. He also described the island’s semiconductor industry as important to the global market and expressed confidence that planned US arms sales would proceed.

Chinese analysts offered a more positive reading for Beijing. Zhu Songling of Beijing Union University said references by Trump to the US-China alliance in the Second World War suggested recognition of Beijing’s view of the post-war order. Renmin University analyst Wang Yiwei said Washington’s assertion that policy was unchanged reflected its long-standing strategic ambiguity, rather than a new position.