‘Fire and water’: Xi warns Taiwan issue could rupture China-US ties

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SINGAPORE – Casting the Taiwan question as the defining test of whether Washington and Beijing can avoid open conflict, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned his US counterpart on May 14 to handle it “with utmost caution”.

The island’s independence and peace across the Taiwan Strait “are as irreconcilable as fire and water”, said Mr Xi in a two-hour meeting with US President Donald Trump in Beijing.

The Chinese leader’s strong language, punctuating what was otherwise a day of warm displays of goodwill between the two leaders, underscored Beijing’s insistence that Washington not cross previously undisputed red lines with its military support, high-level exchanges and political backing for Taipei.

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers had visited Taipei as recently as March 30, where they urged Taiwan’s Parliament to approve a stalled US$40 billion (S$51 billion) special defence budget.

After months of wrangling, Taiwan’s opposition-controlled legislature on May 8 approved two-thirds of what President Lai Ching-te had requested, funding US arms purchases but cutting domestic programmes like drones.

Mr Trump had signed off on a US$11 billion weapons sale to Taiwan in 2025. He is now weighing whether to approve another US$14 billion deal.

On April 30, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the Taiwan issue concerns China’s “core interests” and represents the “biggest risk” in China-US relations.

Analysts see China’s framing of the Taiwan issue as its way of ensuring the issue is in the front and centre of talks between presidents Trump and Xi, and not sidelined in what could otherwise be a deal-driven summit focused on trade, technology and global crises.

China may also believe that Mr Trump will be more amenable than past leaders to making concessions on support for Taiwan, some analysts said. Asked a few days before his trip to Beijing if the US should keep selling weapons to Taiwan, Mr Trump told reporters at the White House on May 11: “President Xi would like us not to, and I’ll have that discussion.” 

Said Mr Joe Mazur, geopolitics analyst at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China: “You could argue that China sees an opening to get more of what it wants in terms of getting the US to reduce either material or rhetorical support for Taiwan.

“Given Trump’s transactional nature and his relative ambivalence towards American security commitments, this is probably the best shot China has to extract some kind of concession there.”

But the US President’s instincts would likely be held in check by his Cabinet members and the broader political consensus in the US, Mr Mazur added. “While Trump does tend to keep his own counsel, doing so would mean going very hard against the grain of bipartisan opinion in Washington.”

Speaking in Taipei on May 14 after the summit between the Chinese and US leaders, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council deputy head and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh said that Taiwan “will continue to maintain close communication with the American side” and called for Beijing to stop its military pressure on the island.

Beijing views self-ruled Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out the use of force to “reunify” with it. In recent years, China’s air force and navy have stepped up their presence near the island.

Beijing also prohibits all its diplomatic partners from maintaining formal ties with Taipei.

Highlighting the contrast in the Chinese and American readouts from the Trump-Xi meeting on May 14, Shanghai-based international relations scholar Shen Dingli said the Taiwan issue is likely to remain at an impasse, even as Mr Trump and Mr Xi are slated to meet three more times in 2026.

While the Chinese statement from the meeting gave the Taiwan issue prominence, the White House’s statement made no mention of it.

“China is certainly prepared for America not giving it anything. And judging from the readouts, America indeed gave nothing this time. So, why would there be a reason to think that after another meeting later this year, America would suddenly give in?” Professor Shen told The Straits Times.

“If China had obtained from Mr Trump a statement opposing Taiwan independence, it definitely would have been announced today. But there was nothing,” he added. “Trump stuck to his ‘principle’, which is to be ambiguous. He neither says the US opposes Taiwan independence nor says he supports reunification.”

Prof Shen said friction over the Taiwan question could threaten the implementation of other agreements expected to be announced during their Beijing summit if the US continues to press the issue when Mr Trump returns home.

“Ever since China and America established diplomatic relations, the Taiwan issue has always cast a shadow. Right now, the shadow is at its largest,” he added.