Donald Trump has held back-to-back calls with Chinese president Xi Jinping and Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi amid a deepening row between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Xi told the US president during their hour-long call that “Taiwan’s return to China is an integral part of the post-war international order”.
According to the Chinese readout of the call, Trump told Xi that the United States understands how important the Taiwan question is to China. In an apparent reference to the current dispute with Japan, Xi recalled that the US and China fought on the same side during the second World War.
“China and the US fought shoulder to shoulder against fascism and militarism. Given what is going on, it is even more important for us to jointly safeguard the victory of World War II,” Xinhua news agency quoted the Chinese leader as saying.
China and Japan have been in a standoff for three weeks since Takaichi told a parliamentary committee that an attack by Beijing on Taiwan would represent a “survival-threatening situation” for Tokyo that would justify deploying Japanese military forces. Japan insisted that the remarks did not represent a change of policy but China has demanded that Takaichi should withdraw her comments.
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“Japanese officials have kept mentioning the Japanese government’s ‘consistent position’ or repeating that their position is ‘unchanged’. We have explicitly asked the Japanese side what they mean exactly by this so-called ‘consistent position’ and whether they can fully articulate this ‘consistent position’ to the public?” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.
“The Japanese side has been repeating the mere notion of an unchanged position but nothing it says ever touched upon the real issue. Essentially, the Japanese side has been deliberately evading China’s call for it to retract the erroneous remarks and hoping that somehow the issue would resolve itself.”
The US did not mention Taiwan in its account of the call but Trump said there had been significant progress in the relationship with China since meeting Xi in South Korea last month. He said they discussed Chinese purchases of American soybeans and other farm products, as well as efforts to halt the export from China of chemicals used to make the drug fentanyl.
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Beijing said the two leaders also discussed Ukraine and Trump’s proposal for peace, which is currently under discussion among US, Russian and Ukrainian military officials meeting in Abu Dhabi.
“President Xi emphasised China’s support for all efforts that are conducive to peace and expressed the hope that the various sides would narrow their differences, reach a fair, lasting and binding peace agreement at an early date and resolve the crisis at its root,” Xinhua said.
Trump called Takaichi after his conversation with Xi and updated her on the state of US-China relations. But the Japanese prime minister declined to say if they discussed Taiwan.
“I believe we were able to confirm the close co-operation between Japan and the US, following president Trump’s recent visit to Japan, under the current international circumstances,” she said.
“President Trump said that I am a very close friend of his and that I should feel free to call him any time.”
Taiwan’s premier Cho Jung-tai criticised Xi’s call for Taiwan’s “return” to China, insisting that the island’s people were determined to maintain their self-governing status.
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“We must once again emphasise that the Republic of China, Taiwan, is a fully sovereign and independent country,” he said.
“For the 23 million people of our nation, ‘return’ is not an option – this is very clear.”
