China reacted relatively calmly on Friday after a series of diplomatic broadsides by the United States, expressing anger over new arms sales by Washington to Taiwan but hoping ties could soon be brought back on track.
US officials have said that President Donald Trump is growing increasingly frustrated with China over its inability to restrain North Korea's arms and missile programmes. This week, the United States imposed sanctions on two Chinese citizens and a shipping company for helping North Korea's weapons programmes, announced a $1.4 billion arms sale for Taiwan, and said it would like sick Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo to be treated "elsewhere".
It has also placed China on its global list of the worst offenders in human trafficking and forced labour and senior US officials have told Reuters that Washington is considering trade actions against Beijing, including tariffs on steel imports.
It's a long way from the “bromance” that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared to have at their first summit in April. Trump had made a grand gesture of his desire for warm ties in the meeting at his Florida residence and subsequently called Xi a "good man".
While China said it was “outraged” at the arms sales for Taiwan, and upset with the North Korea-related sanctions, it did not make specific threats of retaliation. In 2010, Beijing threatened to sanction US firms that sell weapons to Taiwan after Washington announced a much bigger $6.4 billion arms package.
Jia Qingguo, dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University and who has advised the government on foreign policy, cautioned against interpreting recent events as indicating a shift in China-US relations, saying it was still too early to tell. Jia said:
Jia added, “It's a question of how much the two countries will be able to manage these conflicts, whether they can manage them better than the previous administration.”
Trump and Xi are expected to meet next week on the sidelines of a G20 summit in the German city of Hamburg. China has long been cautious about Trump, China-based diplomatic sources say, believing he is unpredictable and needs to be handled with care.
Trump upset China even before taking office, taking a call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, overturning decades of precedent of no high-level official contacts between the United States and an island China considers to be a wayward province.
While China has worked hard to get Trump to understand the importance of Taiwan to the China-US relationship, it has never seriously expected Washington to stop selling it weapons, provision for which is explicitly made in US law. Shen said:
The arms sale came hot on the heels of a US Senate committee approving a bill calling for the resumption of port visits to Taiwan by the US Navy for the first time since Washington ditched Taipei and established ties with Beijing in 1979.
While China's Defence Ministry registered its opposition to the bill on Thursday, spokesman Wu Qian pointed out that as long as they respect each other's core concerns, the Chinese and US militaries can be an "engine of stability" for the two countries.
Shi said, referring to the Florida summit:
Shi added, “Maybe you can say that China-US relations have gone back to being normal. Trump has no patience, and nobody can be surprised that he's pushed certain issues to the fore.”
(This piece has been published in arrangement with Reuters.)
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