After welcoming President Donald Trump with booming cannons, a band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and China's national anthem, and hundreds of school children waving flowers and American and Chinese flags, Chinese President Xi Jinping did not waste any time in warning Trump that their two countries could clash over Taiwan if the issue was not handled properly.
According to a post on X by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, Xi told Trump that "the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations."
The Associated Press points out that unusually harsh admonition at the highly anticipated summit in Beijing underscores just how far apart Trump and Xi remain regarding Washington's relations with Taiwan, the self-ruled island democracy that China claims as part of its territory.
Retired Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold says opinion polls have shown that Taiwan's people are divided on the issue of independence versus unification with the mainland.
"I look at the Taiwan situation right now and, quite frankly, I'm disappointed in the Taiwanese people," he tells AFN. "They're split as to whether they want to be part of China, whether they want to attempt to be a part of China and still have a democracy — which clearly did not work out in the case of Hong Kong — or do they want to just surrender?"
Lippold says the Taiwanese people need to let history help them make up their minds.
Until then, he thinks the United States needs to ask itself why it is "picking a fight with China over Taiwan when Taiwan doesn't even want to make up their own mind what they want to do."
Another national defense analyst recently told AFN he does not think President Trump wants to take the nation to war over this.
