On Thursday, Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping had their first conversation, in which they seemed to establish common ground, as reported by The New York Times. Most importantly for the foreign power, Trump agreed to honor the ‘One China’ Policy. This may help ease tensions after Trump took a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan after his election victory.
The One China policy holds that there’s only one Chinese government, and that the island of Taiwan is a renegade province that shall one day rejoin the mainland. Trump’s diplomatic phone call with Taiwan angered China because it appeared to be a blatant refusal of the One China policy. So, the NY Times noted that Jinping only agreed to the phone call with Trump if he would publicly recognize the policy. Trump did so, which may give the upper hand to China, who may now be skeptical of some of Trump’s tough talk in the future. Yet perhaps Trump has avoided war with China — always a good thing — and the rocky relations may be repaired.
Despite his actual productive stride, Trump somehow believes he didn’t get proper credit for his chat with China (he did). He complain-tweeted that the NY Times did not report he spoke to Jinping — a statement that is false if you read the first line of the story:
The first line of the @nytimes story literally says the two spoke Thursday evening: https://t.co/jGdiIerMv1 pic.twitter.com/f0PdIH5sGa
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 10, 2017
Even when he’s making diplomatic progress, Trump still finds a way to get mad at the media.
(Via The New York Times)