Many experts anticipated Chinese officials to be quite displeased about President-elect Donald Trump’s recent call with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. An op-ed released on Saturday indicates that they may have chalked up the move to “inexperience.”
Many experts anticipated Chinese officials to be quite displeased about President-elect Donald Trump’s recent call with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen.
An op-ed released on Saturday indicates that they may have chalked up the move to “inexperience.”
In the piece, state-run news service China Daily says the exchange was “a striking move but it does not bear the same importance as it seems to be."
It then states, “For Trump, it exposed nothing but his and his transition team's inexperience in dealing with foreign affairs.”
The editorial goes on to suggest that the president-elect needs to start upholding the decades-long ‘one-China’ policy which backs China’s claim that Taiwan is a province, not a sovereign nation.
The piece then points out that China conducted $558 billion in trade with the U.S. last year and holds $1.19 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds.
In response to the controversy that has erupted over the call, Trump tweeted that President Tsai called him and that the “U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment.”
Vice President-elect Mike Pence also reportedly defended the move on Sunday, saying, “It was nothing more than taking a courtesy call from a democratically elected leader.”