China’s president, Xi Jinping, has spoken to the US president-elect, Donald Trump, on the phone in the first direct contact between the two men since 2021.
Days ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Trump and Xi spoke on Friday to discuss TikTok, trade, fentanyl and Taiwan.
“The call was a very good one for both China and the U.S.A. It is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “President Xi and I will do everything possible to make the World more peaceful and safe!”
Xi, along with other world leaders, had been invited to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday. He declined, but China’s foreign ministry announced on Friday that the vice-president, Han Zheng, would go as Xi’s special representative.
Chinese state media said that Xi congratulated Trump on his election victory and said that he wished for a good start to China-US relations. Xi said that the two countries should respect each other’s “core interests” and said that he hoped that the US would handle the Taiwan issue “with caution”.
Beijing is bracing itself for four years of economic and geopolitical uncertainty as Trump prepares to take office for a second time. In his first term in the White House, Trump introduced tariffs on about $350bn of goods from China, leading to retaliatory tariffs from Beijing.
A trade deal reached in 2020 committed China to buying an additional $200bn of US goods. But China purchased only about 60% of what it agreed to, something that Trump’s pick for treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, raised during his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday.
Bessent called China “the most imbalanced, unbalanced economy in the history of the world”.
Trump has promised even higher tariffs on Chinese goods after he takes office on Monday.
But there are also areas in which Trump stands closer to China’s interests. He is reportedly considering delaying a ban on TikTok which is due to come into effect on Sunday unless the video-sharing app divests from its parent company, the Beijing-based Bytedance. China’s foreign ministry has previously called the US bill that would see TikTok banned in the US “contrary to the principles of fair competition and justice”.
