President-elect Donald Trump on Friday said he wouldn’t commit to backing the “One China” policy, a stance Beijing sees as non-negotiable.
“Everything is under negotiation including One China,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal when asked about the policy.
China has long considered Taiwan a breakaway province that belongs to China. The U.S. adopted the ‘One China’ policy and stopped recognizing Taiwan’s government in 1979, when the U.S. and China renewed diplomatic relations.
{mosads}Trump last month spoke by phone with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, breaking longstanding U.S. protocol and leading China to lodge a formal complaint.
Later in December, China seized an unmanned underwater U.S. Navy vehicle in the South China Sea before returning it days later — an action that experts saw as related to Trump’s call with Tsai.
Trump on Friday defended his phone call with Taiwan’s leader.
“We sold them $2 billion of military equipment last year,” he said. “We can sell them $2 billion of the latest and greatest military equipment but we’re not allowed to accept a phone call. First of all it would have been very rude not to accept the phone call.”
In the interview, Trump also criticized Beijing for currency manipulation, but said he wouldn’t formally label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office.
“I would talk to them first,” he said. “Certainly they are manipulators.”
“Instead of saying, ‘We’re devaluating our currency,’ they say, ‘Oh, our currency is dropping.’ It’s not dropping. They’re doing it on purpose,” he added.
“Our companies can’t compete with them now because our currency is strong and it’s killing us.”