President-elect Donald J. Trump said his support for the decades-old One-China policy will hinge on cutting a better deal on trade and that other nations, especially China, shouldn’t be deciding whom he talks to.

“I fully understand the One-China policy, but I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One-China policy, unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” Trump said in interview with Fox News Sunday.

“I don’t want China dictating to me,” he added, echoing his comment a week ago on Twitter, days after he broke with decades of protocol and spoke by phone with Taiwan’s president in a move that prompted a Chinese protest.

Last week, Trump told a crowd in Iowa that China would soon have to “play by the rules.”

The Republican threatened during his campaign to brand China a currency manipulator immediately upon taking office, and to slap 45-percent tariffs on its exports to the US.

The US is being “being hurt very badly by China with devaluation, with taxing us heavy at the borders when we don’t tax them, with building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea, which they shouldn’t be doing, and frankly with not helping us at all with North Korea,” he said in the Fox interview, which was taped on Saturday.

The comments come after Trump’s 10-minute phone call with Tsai Ing-wen in early December, the closest a leader of Taiwan has come to getting formal recognition from Washington since the US established ties with the Communist government in Beijing almost four decades ago.

The One-China policy is an acknowledgment that Taiwan and China are part of the same China, even if they disagree on what that means. China regards it as a bedrock policy, not the bargaining chip that Trump suggested.

The Trump call, which helped Tsai draw global attention to the democratically run nation’s increased isolation in the shadow of a rising China, may have been a first step to upending the balance, weeks before Trump takes office on January 20.

Trump’s comments are significant because, while he suggests the US wants to include the One-China policy as part of broader trade discussions, the government in Beijing considers the arrangement nonnegotiable.

In fact, Chinese leaders define Taiwan as a so-called core interest, with the view the island belongs to China and will never be independent.

“It seems pretty clear that Trump wants to use the One-China policy as a bargaining chip—the risk is real and present,” said Wang Tao, head of China economic research at UBS AG in Hong Kong. “For China, there is no balancing of trade and Taiwan—Taiwan is considered the utmost core interest of China, not for bargaining.”

The Global Times, a party-run newspaper, said in an editorial on Monday the One-China policy “cannot be bought or sold.”

“It looks like Trump only knows about business and thinks everything can be assessed with a price tag, and as long as he’s powerful enough, he could use force to buy or sell,” the paper said. China should make Trump “hit some snags” to show him it’s not “easy to bully,” it said. The policy was worked out in the 1970s as President Richard Nixon switched formal diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan’s Kuomintang government, which fled to the island during a civil war three decades earlier.

At the same time, China has been willing to allow Taiwan almost complete unofficial sovereignty. The US has sold billions of dollars in weapons to the Taiwan government over the years, while China’s own trade with the island has risen steadily.

“For over three decades, Washington’s interactions with Taiwan have been the most sensitive, contentious, and choreographed aspects of US-China relations,” Derek Chollet, a senior adviser at the German Marshall Fund and former member of the Obama administration, said last week. “The fact this call happened and the way it was reported out either reflects ambivalence or ignorance about that history—or maybe both.”

China may use the phone call as leverage in interactions with the US, he said. “They may use this as an excuse to find some way to respond, to stick it to us,” Chollet said. “China unquestionably considers the years to come as a huge opportunity, when the US will likely be embroiled in domestic crisis and pursuing policies that will leave it more isolated in the world, so this move, whether intended or not, gives them a grievance to pursue.”

While it emerged that former US Sen. Bob Dole, acting as a paid lobbyist for Taiwan’s government, connected Trump’s staff with Taiwanese officials in advance of the call, Trump defended his decision to speak with Tsai. He said he accepted the call, which was made by Tsai. Claims from his own advisers that he was considering the move for weeks were “all wrong,” he said.

“Why should some other nation be able to say I can’t take a call?” Trump said. “It actually would’ve been very disrespectful, to be honest with you, not taking it.” </s> Sovereignty question: The ‘One-China policy’ underscores recognition of China’s sovereignty over Taiwan. Picture shows a protest in Taiwan against a meeting in 2015 between the leaders of Taiwan and China. | Photo Credit: Chiang Ying-ying

China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday warned that any change in the U.S.’s one-China policy will impair ties between Beijing and Washington.

“Upholding the ‘one China’ principle is the political basis for developing China-U.S. ties. If this basis is interfered with or damaged, then the healthy development of China-U.S. relations and bilateral cooperation in important areas is out of the question,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing on Monday.

Mr. Geng was responding to a spate of queries following a Sunday interview on Fox News by President-elect Donald Trump, where he questioned the U.S.’s persistence with the one-China policy, unless there were concessions from Beijing on trade and other issues.

“I don’t know why we have to be bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” Mr. Trump said.

He also blamed China for devaluing its currency, and not cooperating with Washington on North Korea and the South China Sea.

The one-China policy underscores recognition of China’s sovereignty over Taiwan — a position that has been held by the U.S. since 1979.

“China has noted the report and expresses serious concern about it. I want to stress that the Taiwan issue concerns China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and involves China’s core interests,” Mr. Geng said.

Earlier, an editorial in the Global Times newspaper, affiliated with the Communist Party of China, asserted that the one-China policy was non-negotiable. It rebuked the U.S. President-elect for being “as ignorant as a child in terms of foreign policy”.

The daily warned that Beijing would have no reason to “put peace above using force to take back Taiwan” if Mr. Trump retracted from the policy, in place since 1979.

The one-China policy “is not something that can be negotiated... It seems Trump knows only about business. He thinks he can put a price on everything”, Global Times said.

“At that time [after Trump abandons the one-China policy]... mainland China will put forward a series of decisive new Taiwan policies. We will prove that the United States no longer dominates the Taiwan Strait.”

“He particularly needs to learn what the relationship between China and U.S. is about.”

Some Chinese academics point out that Mr. Trump’s remarks were not driven by his inexperience in foreign policy.

“It appears that the remarks were made quite deliberately. Perhaps, Mr. Trump and his team want to make a deal with China, based on the Taiwan issue. But China, cannot make any deal, which questions its sovereignty over Taiwan,” Liu Zongyi of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies told The Hindu.

Reuters quoted Wang Yiwei, an international relations professor at Beijing’s Renmin University, as saying Mr. Trump was possibly using the Taiwan issue to try and strike a bargain with China over trade. “He wants to get the best possible trade deal with China he can so that he can boost the U.S. economy.” </s> China warned Donald Trump against using the "One China" policy regarding Taiwan as a bargaining chip in trade talks as the U.S. president-elect breaks with decades of diplomatic protocol.

"Adherence to the One China policy is the political bedrock for the development of the China-U.S. relationship," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters in Beijing at a regular briefing Monday. "If it is compromised or disrupted, the sound and steady growth of the China-U.S. relationship as well as bilateral cooperation in major fields would be out of the question."

Trump said in an interview broadcast Sunday that his support for the policy, which has underpinned U.S. behavior toward Taiwan since the 1970s, will hinge on cutting a better deal on trade. He tweeted Dec. 4 that China has devalued its currency and heavily taxed U.S. products, and he told a crowd in Iowa last week that China would soon have to "play by the rules."

Policymakers in Beijing initially had a more subdued response after Trump departed from diplomatic convention earlier this month and spoke by phone with Taiwan's president. But the official Xinhua News Agency on Monday published a commentary warning that China could be more likely to consider a military takeover of Taiwan "if Trump insisted on his provocations."

[TRUMP: Timeline of president-elect’s career + list of appointments so far]

The One China policy is an acknowledgment that Taiwan and China are part of the same China, even if they disagree on what that means. Chinese leaders define Taiwan as a so-called core interest, with the view that the island belongs to China and will never be independent.

"For China, there is no balancing of trade and Taiwan," said Wang Tao, head of China economic research at UBS AG in Hong Kong. "Taiwan is considered the utmost core interest of China, not for bargaining."

"I fully understand the One China policy, but I don't know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade," Trump said in interview with Fox News Sunday that was taped Saturday. "I don't want China dictating to me," he added.

Trump's 10-minute phone call with President Tsai Ing-wen in early December was the closest a Taiwanese leader has come to getting formal recognition from Washington since the U.S. established ties with the Communist government in Beijing almost four decades ago. Trump threatened during his campaign to brand China a currency manipulator immediately upon taking office, and to slap 45 percent tariffs on its exports to the U.S.

Taiwan's government must prepare for the future given uncertainty surrounding the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which Trump has pledged to abandon, Taipei-based cable television TVBS cited Tsai as saying Monday. Eric Huang, director of the International Affairs Department of the island's opposition party Kuomintang, said that peace in the Taiwan Strait shouldn't be sacrificed under any circumstance.

"We urge the new U.S. administration and its leadership to fully recognize the sensitivity of the Taiwan question and stick to the One China policy," Geng said.

The policy was worked out in the 1970s as President Richard Nixon switched formal diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan's Kuomintang government, which fled to the island during a civil war three decades earlier. </s> BEIJING -- China said Monday that it has “serious concern” about President-elect Donald Trump’s latest comments suggesting he is reconsidering America’s relationship with Taiwan.

Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said Monday that Mr. Trump’s comments in a television interview over the weekend raised the possibility that U.S.-China relations would be “badly affected.” Geng said the “one China” policy was the “political foundation” of any Sino-American ties.

Impact of President-elect Trump's Taiwan call, China criticisms

“If it is compromised or interrupted, the sound and steady growth of China-U.S. relationship and the cooperation in important fields between the two countries will be out of the question. We urge the new U.S. administration and its leadership to fully recognize the sensitivity of the Taiwan problem and stick to One China policy,” Geng said.

The United States switched relations from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. China considers Taiwan to be part of China and any reference to a separate Taiwanese government as a grave insult.

But Mr. Trump said on “Fox News Sunday” that he doesn’t feel “bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”

In a commentary published hours after Mr. Trump’s remarks to Fox, China’s state-run tabloid the Global Times blasted the president-elect as “naïve,” even “immature” for suggesting he could change the U.S. stance on the one-China policy.

The opinion piece suggests that Mr. Trump read up on U.S.-China relations and stop resorting to “bullying,” but it also leaves the new U.S. leader room to change his mind, suggesting he is “very fickle” and “may eat his words sometime soon.” </s> President-elect says he sees no reason why the US should continuing abiding by One China policy unless a bargain is reached with Beijing involving trade

The Chinese government has warned Donald Trump it is “seriously concerned” after the US president-elect indicated he might jettison a four-decade understanding with Beijing unless its leaders were prepared to strike a new “deal” with his administration.

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, the president-elect said he saw no reason why the US should continuing abiding by the “One China” policy – under which Washington does not recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state – unless Beijing was prepared to enter into some kind of bargain.

Could Trump's chest-thumping over China trigger a trade war? Read more

“I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘One China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” Trump told the channel.



Washington’s acceptance of the “One China” principle – according to which Taiwan is officially regarded as part of the same single Chinese nation as the mainland – has been a crucial part of the foundation of US-China relations since ties between the two countries were re-established by Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong in 1972.



Trump’s comments drew an angry riposte from Beijing. Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, told reporters that bilateral ties and “the sound and steady growth of China-US relations” would be “out of the question” were Trump to turn away from the “One China” policy.

“We urge the incoming US administration and its leaders to fully recognise the sensitivity of the Taiwan question … [and] to properly deal with Taiwan-related matters in a prudent manner so as not to disrupt or damage the overall interests of the bilateral relationship,” Geng said, describing the “One China” principle as the “political bedrock” of ties between the two countries.

The question of Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a breakaway province that should one day be reunified with the mainland, was one of China’s “core interests”, the spokesman pointed out.

In a separate statement, the ministry cited Foreign Minister Wang Yi as warning during a trip to Switzerland against moves to damage the “one China” principle, having been asked by a reporter about Trump’s call with Tsai.

“China is paying close attention to developments,” Wang said. “I can clearly say that no matter whether the Tsai Ing-wen authority, any other person in the world, or any other force, if they try and damage the one China principle and harm China’s core interests, in the end they are lifting a rock only to drop it on their feet.”

Trump’s comments came less than a fortnight after he looked to have initiated a potentially damaging diplomatic row with Beijing by holding a telephone conversation with Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, and subsequently attacking China on Twitter.

In what was widely seen as an attempt to soothe tensions, Trump subsequently appointed the Iowa governor, Terry Branstad – a man China called “an old friend of the Chinese people” – as ambassador to Beijing.

Orville Schell, the head of the Centre on US-China Relations at New York’s Asia Society, said Trump’s latest comments – which the academic described as an “incredible provocation” – were the latest example of the billionaire’s contradictory moves towards China.

“He sometimes punches Beijing and he sometimes seems to reach out and hug them. The phone call to Tsai Ing-wen would be the former. Terry Branstad would be the latter. Now we have another uppercut,” he said of the Fox News interview.

Speaking on Sunday, Trump defended his protocol-shredding decision to talk to President Tsai on 2 December, the first such conversation between a US president or president-elect and a leader of the self-ruled island since ties between America and Taiwan were severed in 1979.



China considers Taiwan a renegade province and does not allow countries to maintain diplomatic relations with both Taipei and Beijing.



“I don’t want China dictating to me and this was a call put in to me,” Trump said. “It was a very nice call. Short. And why should some other nation be able to say I can’t take a call?”

“I think it actually would’ve been very disrespectful, to be honest with you, not taking it,” he added.

The president-elect also returned to some of the themes on which he criticised China during the election campaign.

“We’re being hurt very badly by China with devaluation, with taxing us heavy at the borders when we don’t tax them, with building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea, which they shouldn’t be doing, and frankly with not helping us at all with North Korea,” he told Fox News.

“You have North Korea. You have nuclear weapons and China could solve that problem and they’re not helping us at all.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump speaks on Fox News on Sunday.

Nick Bisley, an international relations expert from La Trobe University in Melbourne, said: “The signal Trump is sending to China is: ‘You are not going to push us around; you are not going to dictate terms; we are going to be the ones who dictate terms to you’. And he’s also signalling, whether deliberately or not, that there are no sacred cows in US foreign policy, whether in Asia or anywhere else.”

Bisley said Trump’s early moves would have China’s leaders, who had anticipated dealing with a predictable “Obama 3.0” under a Clinton administration, scratching their heads.

“I think they will be genuinely befuddled and just thinking: ‘How do we deal with this guy? What’s the playbook?’” he said. “The overall consequence of all of this is that it’s going to make the region a lot more uncertain and the temperature is going to be a lot higher.”

Li Yonghui, the head of the school of international relations at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said Trump was “testing the water” with China before taking office next month.

“It fits with the logic of a businessman. But on this issue, he has really gone off in the wrong direction. If he doesn’t understand the nature of the Taiwan issue then sooner or later he will. Taiwan is not like other issues … China will not compromise on the Taiwan issue.

“If the US wants to change the ‘One-China’ policy, then it will shake the foundations of Sino-US relations. [The consequences] are hard to imagine,” the Chinese academic warned.



In an editorial, the Global Times, a fervently nationalistic party-run tabloid, said Trump was “as ignorant as a child” in the field of diplomacy and warned him the “one China” policy was “not for sale”.

The newspaper claimed Trump’s inexperience meant he was easily “influenced or even manipulated by hardliners around him”.

It said China needed “to launch a resolute struggle with him” and should be “prepared to accompany Trump on a rollercoaster ride” for Sino-US relations. “We must buckle up, as should others around the world,” it said.

Schell said it was hard to predict how Beijing might respond to Trump’s latest gambit.

“I don’t know what Beijing is going to make of this because they have always dealt with these very square, proper people like Obama and Hillary Clinton who have always sought to keep the US policy relatively constant. And here you have someone who is doing the absolute opposite,” he said.

“I think they will be very careful about responding because in a certain sense they are meeting a brinksman just like themselves … [and] I don’t know what a brinksman or a bully does when they meet another brinksman and a bully. [Violence] would be one option, but very often one of them backs down.”

Additional reporting by Christy Yao and Reuters </s> President-elect Donald Trump questioned in an interview broadcast Sunday whether the United States should continue its "one China" policy unless Beijing makes concessions on trade and other issues.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump commented on a phone conversation earlier this month with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen that had fallen subject to intense media scrutiny.

"I heard the call was coming probably an hour or two before. I fully understand the 'one China' policy, but I don't know why we have to be bounded by a 'one China' policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade," he said.

"I mean, look, we're being hurt very badly by China with devaluation, with (them) taxing us heavy at the borders when we don't tax them."

Trump said China was building a "massive fortress" in the South China Sea, and "frankly not helping us at all with North Korea."

He emphasized that he had not initiated the call with the Taiwan president and that it was a short message of congratulations on his November election victory. "It was a very nice call. Short," he said.

Reaction on social media was swift. One supporter wrote on Twitter: "he is a business man its called playing hardball."

But others questioned the wisdom of Trump's antagonist approach to dealing with China. </s> President-elect Donald Trump got everyone up in arms on the weekend by saying the U.S. would not necessarily be bound by the one China policy.

But what, exactly is the policy? Well, for almost four decades, since 1979, there has been a diplomatic understanding in the U.S. of the Chinese position that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of that China.

As such, the U.S. has formal ties with China rather than the island of Taiwan, considered by China as a breakaway province that will eventually be brought back into the fold.

Taiwan, however, claims its independence and calls itself the Republic of China.

Read more: Beijing expressing ‘serious concern’ about Trump after he said the U.S. is not bound by One China policy

But Republic of China or no Republic of China, if you want to do business with the People’s Republic of China, you have no official ties to Taipei.

So it’s easy to see why Trump triggered so many responses when he said on the weekend he wouldn’t feel “bound by a one China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”

That statement came less than two weeks after he’d taken a call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, the first time an American president or president-elect has publicly spoken to a Taiwanese leader in nearly four decades.

An official Chinese newspaper called Donald Trump “as ignorant as a child.”

Here’s what a few others are saying: </s> China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday warned that any change in the one-China policy, if pursued by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, will impair ties between Beijing and Washington.

"Upholding the 'one-China' principle is the political basis for developing China-U.S. ties. If this basis is interfered with or damaged then the healthy development of China-U.S. relations and bilateral cooperation in important areas is out of the question," China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing on Monday.

Mr. Geng was responding to a spate of queries following a Sunday interview on Fox News by Mr. Trump, where he questioned U.S. persistence with a one-China policy, unless there were concessions from Beijing on trade and other issues.

“I don’t know why we have to be bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” Mr. Trump observed.

He also blamed China for devaluing its currency, and not cooperating with Washington on North Korea and the South China Sea.

The one-China policy underscores recognition of China’s sovereignty over Taiwan — a position that has been held by the United States since 1979.

"China has noted the report and expresses serious concern about it. I want to stress that the Taiwan issue concerns China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and involves China's core interests," Mr. Geng observed.

Earlier, an editorial in China’s Global Times newspaper, affiliated with the Communist Party of China (CPC), asserted that the one-China policy, recognising Taiwan as a part of China, was non-negotiable. It rebuked the U.S. president-elect for being “as ignorant as a child in terms of foreign policy.”

The daily warned that Beijing would have no reason to “put peace above using force to take back Taiwan” if Mr. Trump retracted from the policy, in place since 1979, which recognises Taiwan as part of China.

In its response, the Global Times made it unambiguous that the one-China policy “is not something that can be negotiated”. It added, “It seems Trump knows only about business. He thinks he can put a price on everything.”

“At that time [after Trump abandons the one-China policy] ... mainland China will put forward a series of decisive new Taiwan policies. We will prove that the United States no longer dominates the Taiwan Strait.”

The daily counselled Mr. Trump to “study foreign affairs humbly”. “He particularly needs to learn what the relationship between China and U.S. is about.”

Some Chinese academics point out that Mr. Trump’s remarks were not driven by the President-elect’s inexperience in foreign policy. “It appears that the remarks were made quite deliberately. Perhaps, Mr. Trump and his team want to make a deal with China, based on the Taiwan issue. But China, cannot make any deal, which questions its sovereignty over Taiwan,” says Liu Zongyi, of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies when contacted by The Hindu.

Reuters quoted Wang Yiwei, an international relations professor at Beijing’s Renmin University, as saying that Mr. Trump was possibly using the Taiwan issue to try and strike a bargain with the United States over trade. "He wants to get the best possible trade deal with China he can so that he can boost the U.S. economy," he observed. </s> PARIS: France’s top diplomat on Wednesday slammed the bullish tone taken by President-elect Donald Trump with key trade ally Beijing in threatening to upend Washington’s One China policy.

“Watch out for China… It’s a big country. You can have disagreements with China but you don’t talk like that to a partner,” remarked French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on France 2 television.

He was responding to apparently off-the-cuff remarks by Trump in an interview with Fox News Sunday in which he questioned whether Washington should continue its “One China policy” unless Beijing makes concessions on trade and other issues.

“When China feels like it is being questioned over the unity of China, it’s not necessarily very smart,” he said.

US diplomatic tradition has long held to this policy, which does not recognize self-administered Taiwan as a sovereign state but sees Beijing as the sole representative.

It is essentially a diplomatic compromise allowing the US to do business with both China and Taiwan while only recognizing Beijing diplomatically.

“I don’t want China dictating to me,” Trump said, defending an earlier phone conversation with the president of Taiwan.

“I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”

Beijing swiftly hit back, saying it was “seriously concerned” by Trump’s suggestion he could drop the longstanding policy, saying it could have a big impact on bilateral ties. AFP
President-elect Donald Trump says he sees no reason why the U.S. should continue to abide by the One China policy unless a bargain is reached with Beijing involving trade.