{"id":193620,"date":"2025-12-14T21:25:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T21:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-wades-into-china-and-japans-escalating-dispute-over-taiwan-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T21:25:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T21:25:45","slug":"trump-wades-into-china-and-japans-escalating-dispute-over-taiwan-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-wades-into-china-and-japans-escalating-dispute-over-taiwan-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump wades into China and Japan's escalating dispute over Taiwan – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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HONG KONG \u2014 President Donald Trump<\/a> has spoken with the leaders of U.S. ally Japan<\/a> and rival superpower China<\/a> amid the pair\u2019s escalating dispute over Taiwan<\/a>.
Trump\u2019s surprise call<\/a> Monday with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping<\/a>, was followed by a call with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi<\/a>, who angered China<\/a> earlier this month with comments on the Beijing-claimed island democracy.
Both China and Japan said Trump initiated the calls, which the White House has not confirmed.
The dispute began when Takaichi, who was elected last month, told lawmakers that a hypothetical Chinese attack on self-ruling Taiwan, which at its closest point is about 70 miles from Japanese territory, could threaten Japan\u2019s survival and trigger a military response from Tokyo.
It was the first time such an explicit remark had been made by a sitting prime minister of Japan, which like the United States has long been deliberately vague as to whether it would intervene militarily in the event of an attack on Taiwan.
China, which describes Taiwan as its \u201ccore of core interests,\u201d has responded with outrage, taking the dispute to the United Nations, advising its citizens against traveling to Japan and seeking economic retaliation<\/a> against Japanese seafood, movies, concerts and more.
On Monday, China criticized Japan\u2019s plan to deploy missiles on an island<\/a> near Taiwan as a deliberate attempt to \u201ccreate regional tension and provoke military confrontation,\u201d while Japan scrambled a fighter jet after it detected a Chinese drone flying between Taiwan and the Japanese island of Yonaguni.
Though Takaichi has refused Beijing\u2019s demands that she retract her \u201cerroneous\u201d remarks, her government says Japan\u2019s policy on Taiwan has not changed and it continues to favor a peaceful resolution to the issue.
Trump has not publicly commented on the dispute, though his ambassador to Japan, George Glass, has said Tokyo can count on U.S. support in the face of Chinese \u201ccoercion.\u201d
Takaichi said Tuesday that she reaffirmed Japan\u2019s close cooperation with the U.S. in her call with Trump, which she said he initiated.
\u201cPresident Trump mentioned that he and I are extremely good friends, and that I should call him any time,\u201d she told reporters, according to Reuters.
Trump seemingly hit it off with Takaichi during a visit to Japan last month, which was followed by a meeting with Xi<\/a> in South Korea<\/a> to address tensions between the world\u2019s two biggest economies over trade and other issues.
Trump said he had a \u201cvery good\u201d call with Xi, their first since that meeting, and that U.S.-China relations were \u201cextremely strong.\u201d
\u201cThere has been significant progress on both sides in keeping our agreements current and accurate,\u201d Trump said in a social media post. \u201cNow we can set our sights on the big picture.\u201d
Trump reaffirmed plans announced last month for him to visit Beijing in April, followed by a U.S. visit by Xi later in the year. He said he and Xi discussed Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans<\/a>, Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine<\/a> and the illicit international flow of fentanyl ingredients<\/a>. Taiwan was not mentioned in Trump\u2019s post.
That is good news for Taiwan amid growing pressure from China and questions about Trump\u2019s commitment to its security, suggesting that \u201cfrom the U.S.\u2019 perspective, there is nothing about Taiwan that has changed,\u201d said Lev Nachman, a professor of political science at National Taiwan University.
Xi also said the U.S. and China had \u201cgenerally maintained a steady and positive trajectory,\u201d according to a readout of the call published by Xinhua, China\u2019s state-run news agency. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday that the call was initiated by the U.S. side.
Unlike Trump\u2019s post, the Chinese readout of the call heavily emphasized Taiwan, whose \u201creturn to China\u201d Xi said was an important part of the post-World War II international order.
Taiwan, a former Japanese colony, was handed to the Republic of China government after Japan\u2019s defeat in 1945, only for that government to retreat to Taiwan a few years later after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong\u2019s communist forces. The island has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai said Tuesday that for the 23 million people of Taiwan, there was \u201cno option of returning\u201d to China.
\u201cWe must once again emphasize that the Republic of China is a fully sovereign and independent nation,\u201d he told reporters in Taipei, using Taiwan\u2019s formal name.
The Trump-Xi call is a \u201cvery good signal\u201d that the strategic competition between the U.S. and China is under control, said Zhu Feng, dean of the School of International Studies at Nanjing University in China, though a \u201cdramatic breakthrough is hard to imagine.\u201d
Taiwan has not been a major focus of U.S.-China relations in recent months, with Trump saying it \u201cnever came up\u201d during his meeting with Xi. The Chinese readout of their Oct. 30 meeting also failed to mention Taiwan, which is unusual.
The Trump-Xi call comes after the U.S. announced two arms sales to Taiwan in the space of a week, the first since Trump returned to office in January. They include an advanced missile system worth almost $700 million and $330 million in fighter jet and other aircraft parts.
China objects to such sales by the U.S., which has no official relations with Taiwan but is legally bound to provide the island with weapons for its defense.
What China is seeking from Trump, Nachman said, is assurance that the U.S. is not going to loudly weigh in on the Taiwan dispute on Takaichi\u2019s behalf.
\u201cFrom Beijing\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s important that other countries realize that there will be punishments for countries that take this pro-Taiwan stance,\u201d he said.
The lack of comments from Trump on the issue, Nachman said, \u201ctells me that the U.S. has no desire to publicly make this about Taiwan more than it\u2019s already become.\u201d
Jennifer Jett is the Asia Digital Editor for NBC News, based in Hong Kong.
Peter Guo is an associate producer based in Hong Kong.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeHONG KONG \u2014 President Donald Trump has spoken with the leaders of U.S. ally Japan and rival superpower China amid the pair\u2019s escalating dispute over Taiwan. Trump\u2019s surprise call Monday with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, was followed by a call with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-193620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}