US President Donald Trump has sought to play down exchanges with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Taiwan, saying on Saturday that they touched on the subject only briefly.
“We didn’t talk about it too much. Right now, it’s fine. It’s just moving along,” Trump said. “We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about Taiwan. He understands very much how I feel.”
During the summit in Washington last week, Xi pressed Trump to take an explicit position against Taiwan independence – a stand that would go beyond the US’ traditional formulation of “not supporting” independence.
In an interview with American broadcaster CNBC on Friday, US ambassador to Beijing David Perdue reaffirmed that “there’s no change in the Taiwan policy”.