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Donald Trump offered to sell weapons to China while hosting its leader, Xi Jinping, last week, the US ambassador to China said on Sunday.
David Perdue told Fox News on Sunday: “President Trump continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people around the world. He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point.”
The extraordinary claim came during an interview about US policy on Taiwan, which has been waiting for months for Trump to approve a new arms sales package worth $14bn, after a record multi-billion dollar deal was unveiled in December last year.
Trump’s level of commitment to protecting Taiwan has previously been questioned. At a meeting with Xi in Beijing in May, Trump said he was keeping the $14bn Taiwan arms sales package in abeyance, describing it as a “very good negotiating chip” in dealings with China.
Washington has long maintained a strategically ambiguous stance on whether it would defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion. But under the decades-old Taiwan Relations Act, it is required to provide Taipei with sufficient military equipment to defend itself.
Beijing has repeatedly said it “resolutely opposes” Washington’s arms sales to the island democracy, which it regards as a breakaway province, despite never having ruled it, and has not renounced the use of force to take. During their Washington meeting last week, Xi urged Trump to oppose “Taiwan independence,” according to a readout from the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
After Purdue’s interview, the White House told the New York Times that the US had no plans to sell arms to China, while the state department said: “US law prohibits arms sales to China and there is no offer or plan to sell arms to China.”
Before the interview, Taiwanese deputy foreign minister Chen Ming-chi spoke of the severe military threat China posed.
“Taiwan faces a severe situation in the Taiwan strait. Even though China’s economy is declining, it continues investing more resources into building military capacity. Under this context, the US very much understands our defence needs,” he told reporters in Taipei.
Trump has not mentioned the sale since last week’s summit, saying only on Saturday that Xi understands his position on Taiwan.
Perdue himself told CNBC on Friday that there had been no change in Taiwan policy by Trump, including on arms sales.
With Reuters
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