Trump’s Huawei promise met with silence from China as Beijing plays down prospects of progress

Official statement after meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump at G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, fails to mention Chinese telecommunications manufacturer

Official state media tones down expectations for quick and easy progress in the trade war

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Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump met in Osaka, Japan, during the G20 summit. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 8:45pm, 1 Jul 2019Updated: 6:07pm, 3 Jul 2019

China has taken a cautious approach in its reaction to Saturday's meeting between President Xi Jinping and US counterpart Donald Trump, remaining quiet over remarks made by the American leader in Japan that some restrictions would be lifted against telecommunications manufacturer Huawei.

After a closed-door, 80-minute meeting between Xi and Trump at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on Saturday, the government published only a short statement summarising the talks, which stated that the two leaders had agreed to a truce, which would stop any new tariffs being placed on Chinese goods imported into the United States.

However, the statement published by the official Xinhua News Agency and the foreign ministry not did mention Huawei, but only said that Xi had asked Trump to treat Chinese companies in a fair manner.

Huawei have been placed on the US Commerce Department’s entity list, which effectively bans US companies from selling equipment and components to the Shenzhen-based manufacturer, while Washington has also frozen the company out of the US 5G network.

But at his press conference which followed the meeting with Xi, Trump announced that US companies could resume sales to Huawei as long as the products involved did not threaten national security.

Trump, though, said the decision on whether to take Huawei off the entity list would be left to later, adding that he will have a further meeting on Tuesday to discuss the issue.

“We are leaving Huawei towards the end. We are seeing what goes on with the trade agreement,” said Trump, suggesting that fully lifting the ban on Huawei would rest on a deal being made to end the trade war.