Xi Jinping hopes that the president may water down US support for a vibrant democracy. Defending the status quo would be better for America too<\/p>\n
China senses opportunity when Donald Trump visits later this month. A nakedly transactional US president in need of a trade deal, and hoping that Beijing could lean on Iran, might shift on Taiwan<\/a> in return. China\u2019s foreign minister, Wang Yi, linked the issue explicitly to broader bilateral cooperation<\/a> in his call with Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, on Thursday. Beijing would be delighted to see Mr Trump soften the US position<\/a>, and perhaps pull back on arms sales<\/a> after a mammoth $11bn package was announced late last year.<\/p>\n Taiwan has been self-governed<\/a> since the end of China\u2019s civil war in 1949, so never ruled by China\u2019s Communist party. Xi Jinping has made unification central to his legacy<\/a>. Three years ago, US intelligence assessed that he had told the People\u2019s Liberation Army<\/a> to be ready for an invasion by 2027. But Beijing would surely prefer to achieve its goal without force.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Xi Jinping hopes that the president may water down US support for a vibrant democracy. Defending the status quo would be better for America too China senses opportunity when Donald Trump visits later this month. A nakedly transactional US president in need of a trade deal, and hoping that Beijing could lean on Iran, might … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}