Beijing presses Taiwan arms sale delay as diplomacy continues
President Trump used a prime-time address last week to accuse China of the “largest compromise of election data in history,” claiming Beijing accessed 220 million U.S. voter files. Beijing called the allegations “entirely fabricated.”
The same day, the Department of Homeland Security finalized a rule slashing visa stays for foreign journalists, with Chinese reporters facing the steepest cut — to 90 days, compared with 240 days for other nationalities. Beijing, which has itself cracked down on independent reporting by both domestic and American journalists, described the rule as “discriminatory” and said it “reserves the right to take reciprocal countermeasures.”
Despite the public confrontations, neither government appears ready to let the relationship fracture, according to The Wall Street Journal. Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu is in the United States this week laying the groundwork for Xi Jinping’s planned state visit, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi is scheduled to meet Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of Association of Southeast Asian Nations meetings in Manila — both moves aimed at keeping a September summit on track.
Trump wants Xi to make the visit, potentially timed around the United Nations General Assembly in late September, and he wants an agriculture deal to present to his farm-state base ahead of the midterm elections. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump is building a new helipad on the South Lawn that Washington insiders say the president would like completed before Xi’s arrival.
China’s economy grew at a 4.3% annual rate in its most recent quarter, its slowest pace in three years, with fixed-asset investment down and consumption still weak, the Journal reported. A rupture with Washington would come at a time when Beijing is managing a domestic slowdown it can no longer paper over.
China is also pressing Washington on Taiwan. A $14 billion arms sale to Taipei has been paused for months, and Chinese policy advisers told the Journal they are confident the freeze can be extended. The two leaders have multiple high-level meetings scheduled, and each one gives Beijing another opportunity to ask Washington to hold off, the advisers said.
Yun Sun, who directs the China program at the Stimson Center, said Beijing is pushing for a larger delay. “Given there are two multilateral events coming in November and December, the Chinese are actually working to block the arms sales entirely this year,” she said. “The question is what they can offer in return. And there, Beijing’s question to the U.S. is ‘what do you want?’”
China is hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in Shenzhen on Nov. 18–19, and Trump is hosting the G-20 summit in Miami on Dec. 14–15 at his Doral resort. The diplomatic machinery is already moving toward those meetings, with each serving as a checkpoint Beijing wants to clear without a Taiwan arms package in between.
Xi Jinping made his first-ever personal appearance at China’s flagship AI conference in Shanghai last week, pledging 5,000 free AI training slots to developing countries and launching a new “World AI Cooperation Organization.” The subtext, the Journal reported, is that Xi needs stable relations with the United States to close the AI gap, and every month without added friction from Washington is a month Beijing can use to build.
In June, China detained an American scholar, Min Zin, at the airport in Kunming on suspicion of espionage. Min Zin heads a Myanmar-focused think tank and is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. Both his think tank and the State Department dispute the charges. The detention came weeks after Trump’s visit to Beijing, and it fits a broader pattern of China intensifying its hunt for spies under the banner of national security, with its intelligence agency blaming foreign influences for stoking youth disillusionment.
On July 17, the White House allowed a 2020 national emergency declaration that stripped Hong Kong of its preferential U.S. treatment to expire, while keeping most Hong Kong-related restrictions in place. The move does not reverse Washington’s Hong Kong policy, but China’s Commerce Ministry responded with unusually warm language praising it — a signal, the Journal reported, that both governments are still looking for ways to avoid raising tensions.
Beijing’s public pushback against Trump’s speech was sharp, but Trump did not attack Xi personally. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson still called on Washington to “foster positive China-U.S. relations,” leaving the door open for diplomacy. The real test, the Journal reported, is whether Trump follows his election-interference claims with any concrete action. If nothing materializes, last week’s flare-up could be written off as noise. If something does, the calculus on both sides could shift quickly.