After Trump row, China urges US to bar Taiwan leader

China’s Foreign Ministry said it had lodged “stern” protests with what it called the “relevant USA side”, implying that it had raised the matter directly with Mr. Trump’s transition team. Having aggressively criticized the TPP, Trump may have been signaling to the Chinese that he was less interested in that kind of competition for influence than in securing the best deals for American companies and American workers. We must confront Trump’s provocations head-on, and make sure he won’t take advantage of China at the beginning of his tenure.

China’s state media were more vocal in their condemnation, however.

Trump will have no choice but to hold off on his trade war.

Meanwhile, Trump further distanced himself from years of United States political correctness regarding China by accusing Beijing of devaluing its currency and building a “massive” military complex.

“I don’t think there was any strategy behind it and I think the effort to push out a story line or a narrative that this was actually a well-thought-about change in direction is highly dubious”, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, told the BBC, saying conflicting accounts made the exchange sound haphazard.

When dealing with global challenges such as climate change, nuclear proliferation and terrorism, the USA may require India to make greater contributions to specific fields which only the United States is concerned about, it said.

Georgia Republican congressman Tom Price, picked by Trump to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services, sponsored a congressional bill in September to give a greenlight to high-level Taiwanese officials to meet with State Department officials.

However, Mr Trump’s resulting remarks over the weekend caused the state-run newspaper, Global Times, to rebuke the NY businessman. But if Trump planned to take a tougher stance, this was a haphazard way to do it. It also accused Taiwan of playing a “small trick” on Trump. “The American people didn’t. They understood it”, he added.

The Communist Party’s flagship newspaper is urging Chinese leaders to keep cool heads and play the adult should Donald Trump continue to test ties in the run up to his inauguration as US president next month. Trump’s one of the election campaign promises was to declare China a currency manipulator.

China is learning what the news media are still struggling with: Donald Trump doesn’t march to the beat of anyone else’s drum. But both suppositions are risky to take for granted. Nobody told him that Hu’s appointment was considered a state secret until the party officially announced it. The Global Times writes that China must fight back, “regardless of the consequences to the dynamics of the Sino-US relationship”. Trump will need that relationship – including that trade relationship – if he wants to maintain stability on the Korean peninsula. “US-Indian relations will become an important part of Trump’s diplomacy”.

China’s response has so far been measured, though as Trump’s rhetoric has escalated, so has the Chinese rhetorical response.

“Taiwan is our ally”, said Stephen Moore, a former economic adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, during a radio interview with WLS-AM on Monday.

Twitter amplifies Trump’s tendency for personal overreaction.