Xi’s call to Trump shows Japan has ‘rattled’ China 

Xi Jinping appears to be “rattled.” China’s “chairman of everything” called US President Donald Trump this week about his planned trip to Beijing in April. The “Taiwan question” was top of the agenda after a “flare-up” with Japan left Xi’s ruling Communist Party fuming. 

The call on Monday followed their tête-à-tête on the margins of the APEC summit in South Korea’s coastal city of Busan last month. It was their first face-to-face talks since 2019, with the two presidents hammering out a trade truce after Trump’s tariffs blitz.

But for Xi, Taiwan, not tariffs, was the main talking point during their call. China’s Foreign Ministry reported that he told Trump that the democratic island’s return to the mainland was an “integral part of the post-World War II international order.” A “red line” for Beijing.

Yet Craig Singleton, at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, felt Xi’s comments smacked of an attack of the jitters. They came amid escalating tensions with Tokyo over China’s military build-up around Taiwan. “Beijing is rattled by the Japan flare-up,” he said.

“[Beijing] sees a regional coalition coalescing around the idea that Taiwan’s security is a shared stake – and that any Chinese quarantine or attack would draw a coordinated response,” he told The New York Times.

The Chinese communist regime has repeatedly distorted the facts.

Chiu Chui-cheng, head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council

War of words:

• China and the United States “fought shoulder to shoulder against fascism and militarism,” the Foreign Ministry pointed out in a briefing this week. 
• “Given what is going on, it is even more important for us to jointly safeguard the victory of World War II,” it reported on the readout to Xi’s talks with Trump.

Delve deeper: The Communist Party-state, which is now China, has repeatedly “distorted history” to suit its narrative as the savior of the nation from Japan’s brutal invasion and occupation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Between the lines: “During the war against Japan, the People’s Republic of China did not exist, but the Chinese communist regime has in recent years repeatedly distorted the facts,” Chiu Chui-cheng, the head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, told Reuters news agency.

Big picture: The Communist Party “didn’t fight imperial Japan.” Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist army “did.” While his “military defended China, the CCP built up strength for the civil war,” defeating Chiang’s exhausted troops before they escaped to Taiwan.

Bottom line: It is against this historical backdrop that Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made it clear this month that an attack on Taiwan represented an “existential threat.” She even hinted that Tokyo could intervene if Beijing launched a blockade or an invasion.

China Factor comment: Xi has built the largest surface fleet in the world, raising tensions in the South and East China Seas, as well as the wider Indo-Pacific. American allies, such as Japan, the Philippines and Australia, are deeply concerned about Beijing’s motives.