President Donald Trump said China promised not to invade Taiwan under his presidency as he weighed in on Beijing’s decadeslong goal of bringing the island democracy under direct Chinese Communist control.
Chinese President Xi Jinping “has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘We would never do anything while President Trump is president’ because they know the consequences,” Trump said during a CBS 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday.
Located roughly 100 miles from China’s coast, Taiwan is a tiny island in the Pacific that looms large in U.S. security interests, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. The United States provides weapons to Taiwan for its self-defense. But Washington has for decades maintained a deliberately ambiguous policy of whether it would militarily rise to Taiwan’s aid if Beijing decides to invade the island, which China has regarded as a rebel region since around 1949.
Trump said during his latest interview that he did not discuss the matter of Taiwan during his high-profile meeting with Xi in South Korea last Wednesday. The two men reached deals on trade as they spent over 1 1/2 hours in conversation in their first encounter of Trump’s second term, but the controversial topic of Taiwan “never came up,” Trump said.
“He never brought it up. People were a little surprised at that,” the president told CBS News host Norah O’Donnell. “But they understand what’s gonna happen.”
Qeustioned on whether he would order U.S. forces into action if China moved militarily on Taiwan, Trump said, “You’ll find out if it happens, and he understands the answer to that.”
“I can’t give away my secrets. The other side knows,” he added when pressed for further details.
Trump’s latest comments echo statements he made over the summer during an August interview.
“I will never do it [invade Taiwan] as long as you’re president; President Xi told me that, and I said, well, I appreciate that,” Trump told Fox News’ Brett Baier aboard Air Force One.
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The president said “nobody’s going to mess” with the U.S. because of the force of military power Washington possesses.
“First of all, the United States is the strongest military power in the world by far. It’s not even close,” Trump told Baier. “We have the best equipment. We have the best of everything, and nobody’s going to mess with that. And I don’t see that at all with President Xi. I think we’re going to get along very well.”
