Trump in no hurry to talk with Tsai, pointing to Xi’s help with North Korea
US president says his relationship with the Chinese leader must be maintained, while Taipei insists it never suggested another phone call was on the horizon
US President Donald Trump said he would talk to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping before speaking to Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen again, after she said an opportunity existed for further direct contact with the White House.
Tsai’s office sought to downplay the apparent snub by Trump, saying she had no plans to currently speak with him and she had been quoted inaccurately.
In an interview with Reuters at the White House on Thursday, Trump said wanted to maintain a good relationship with Xi as he appeared to be willing to help on North Korea.
“My problem is that I have established a very good personal relationship with President Xi,” Trump was quoted as saying. “I really feel that he is doing everything in his power to help us with a big situation. So I wouldn’t want to be causing difficulty right now for him.
“So I would certainly want to speak to him first,” Trump said as he was reported by Reuters sipping a coke delivered by an aide after pressing a button at his desk to order it.
The Tsai government has embraced the new US administration as a chance to recast ties between the self-ruled island and its key ally, and trumpeted their “amiable relationship”.
The two leaders first spoke by phone in December, in a break with decades of protocol, angering Beijing.
Tsai told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that a direct phone call with Trump could take place again.
“We have the opportunity to communicate more directly with the US government,” the news agency quoted her as saying. “We don’t exclude the opportunity to call President Trump himself, but it depends on the needs of the situation and the US government’s consideration of regional affairs.”
In a statement on Friday, Taiwan’s Presidential Office said that “based on the mutual trust and tacit understanding between our two sides, we don’t have a plan at the present stage for such a [phone call] as we understand the US has its priority in dealing with regional affairs”.
Her office said Tsai’s reply was not accurately translated and a spokesman referred questions back to the Chinese transcript of the interview that was posted on the office’s website:
It reads: “We certainly hope in some critical moment and key issues, we are able to have the opportunity to have a more direct communication with the US government”.
Taiwan’s Kuomintang politicians were quick to seize on the incident as further evidence of the incompetence of the Tsai administration, and labelled her a “troublemaker” who had failed to realise Trump was using the island as a pawn in negotiating US interests with Beijing.
“Does she know that in the wake of escalated tensions in North Korea, Trump would naturally focus on US relations with Beijing and this is international politics,” said KMT legislator Lee Yen-hsiu.
KMT legislator Johnny Chiang cast doubt on the ability of Taiwan’s representative office in the US to gather information that reflected the thinking of the Trump administration on the North Korean situation.
If the representative office was supplying Tsai with an accurate understanding, her government would “not have been so rash to believe that its relations with Trump are nice enough to enable Tsai to make another phone call”, he said.
He added Trump’s latest comment showed he viewed the island only as a bargaining chip.
In an interview in January, Trump said US recognition of the one-China policy might be reconsidered if Beijing didn’t make progress on its currency and trade practices.
“Everything is under negotiation, including ‘one China’,” Trump was quoted as saying.
But he changed his stance in February, agreeing to honour the policy after all and hosted Xi at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida earlier this month.
The policy is an understanding between Beijing and Taipei that there is only “one China”, but each side would have its own interpretation of what constitutes “China”.
US affairs expert Chen Chien-jen, a former foreign minister under Taiwan’s Lee Teng-hui administration, said Trump might want to hold a second conversation, as it was in his nation’s interests, but the international situation required Washington and Beijing to work together towards a common goal. “Taiwan is no longer the focus in the dialogue between the two superpowers, meaning the Taiwanese issue is being marginalised.”
