American President-elect Donald Trump confirmed that he held a phone call with genocidal Chinese dictator Xi Jinping on Friday, which he described as a “very good one” that will help Washington and Beijing “solve many problems.”
The Chinese state Xinhua News Agency also confirmed the phone call on Friday but offered no information outside of the existence of the phone call.
Trump is expected to assume the presidency of America a second time on Monday and won the 2024 election on a campaign platform identified the Chinese Communist Party as a major national security threat to the United States. Trump’s campaign repeatedly disparaged his first opponent, outgoing President Joe Biden, as being too friendly to the Communist Party and proposed policies such as limiting China’s ability to buy American farmland and imposing tariffs on China to limit the flood of slave-tainted goods hitting American store shelves. Chinese markets tanked after Trump won the presidency in November; Chinese media has transparently referred to Trump as a “threat” to communist interests.
None the overt friction between the two countries appeared in Trump’s message on his phone call with Xi. Writing on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump promised that he, alongside Xi, would “do everything possible to make the World [sic] more peaceful and safe!”
“I just spoke to Chairman Xi Jinping of China. The call was a very good one for both China and the U.S.A,” Trump wrote. “It is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately.”
Trump said the two leaders discussed “balancing Trade, Fentanyl, TikTok, and many other subjects,” without elaborating.
The phone call was the first communication known to have occurred between Trump and Xi since 2021, when Trump left office after Biden defeated him in the 2020 election. Trump’s first term was marked by support for Chinese victims of communism and policies to contain China’s malign influence internationally – even as Trump remained consistently cordial to Xi. In 2017, Trump famously welcomed Xi to a lavish dinner at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, and ordered airstrikes against the China-allied Bashar Assad regime in Syria as he hosted Xi. Assad’s regime fell to the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militia in December.
Unconfirmed reports indicated in the past month that Trump personally invited Xi to his inauguration on Monday. Shortly before his call with Xi was made public, the Chinese government confirmed that it would send Xi’s vice president, Han Zheng, to represent the country at the event. Han’s presence will be the first time such a high-ranking communist official will attend an American presidential inauguration.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a friendly statement alongside its confirmation of Han’s attendance.
“China follows the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation in viewing and growing its relationship with the United States,” the Foreign Ministry asserted. “We stand ready to work with the new U.S. government to enhance dialogue and communication … [and] jointly pursue a stable, healthy and sustainable China-U.S. relationship and find the right way for the two countries to get along with each other in the new era.”
The topics discussed, according to Trump, are some of the most controversial in the China-U.S. relationship – in stark contrast to the approach of the Biden administration, which claimed to prioritize issues such as “climate change” in discussions with Chinese officials. The Tiktok ban is a particularly contentious topic in the United States.
Tiktok is a Chinese-owned social media application extremely popular in the United States, particularly with younger Americans. On Friday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of a law to ban Tiktok in America on the grounds that it is a major national security risk. Tiktok serves both as an intelligence-gathering application, monitoring its users closely, and a propaganda disseminator, magnifying the impact of content that promotes the values and interests of the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese officials have described the application as an effective propaganda tool.
Tiktok’s parent company, Bytedance, opted not to sell the application to an American administrator before the January 19 deadline, meaning the site will legally have to shut down by that date. Bytedance has also not allowed Americans to download its Chinese equivalent Douyin, known to share intellectual, educational, and otherwise productive content instead of the videos common on Tiktok.
In its stead, the Chinese government is encouraging Americans to download another communist application, Xiaohongshu, or “Little Red Book,” an app sharing a name with mass murderer Mao Zedong’s most famous work. Xiaohongshu has seen millions of downloads in the United States in anticipation of the Tiktok ban.
Trump’s warm remarks on his chat with Xi contrast to the aggressive approach that prospective members of his administration previewed during their Congressional hearings this week. Trump’s choice for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), has made opposition to communism around the world a cornerstone of his policies, leading to China banning him from entering the country. Asked about his opposition to the Communist Party on Wednesday, Sen. Rubio said it would not get in the way of diplomacy.
“They’ve said mean things about me, too, and I’m not sure that they’re fans of mine,” Sen. Rubio said in response to questioning by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “My role now as secretary of state is to lead the diplomatic wing of the country and that will involve engaging them.”
“Despite everything I’ve said, I have consistently throughout my career said that it is that geopolitical … developing imbalance [between China and America] that is the greatest risk to global security and prosperity,” Sen. Rubio added, “because that could quickly trigger not just trade and economic conflict but an armed one which would be catastrophic.”
Trump’s choice to lead the Treasury, Scott Bessent, used his time before the Senate on Thursday to condemn China’s status as the world’s worst polluter.
“China will build a 100 new coal plants this year. There is not a clean energy race, there is an energy race. China will build ten nuclear plants this year, that is not solar,” he asserted. “I am in favor of building more nuclear plants and I would note that the IRA, as scored by the CBO, is wildly out of control of spending on the upside.”
Bessent reportedly indicated he was open to imposing carbon tariffs on China.
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