Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone with US President Donald Trump, their first direct conversation in several months, according to Chinese state media.
The call came shortly after Xi spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin via video link, during which Beijing and Moscow described their ties as “stable” amid global uncertainty. The Kremlin later said Putin had accepted Xi’s invitation to visit China in the first half of this year.
Months of trade tensions due to tariffs
The Xi-Trump talks came ahead of the US president’s possible visit to China in April, a Chinese state broadcaster reported, although Beijing did not immediately release any official details. The White House also did not respond to requests for comment.
The two leaders last spoke by phone in late November, after which Trump described relations between Washington and Beijing as “very strong”. The talks came after a period of heightened tensions in East Asia, including tensions in China-Japan relations.
The new diplomatic initiative comes at a sensitive moment in global geopolitics, as Russia’s New START nuclear weapons treaty signed with the US in 2010 is set to expire on Thursday.
Relations between Washington and Beijing have been strained by months of trade tensions over tariffs imposed by Trump last year. However, relations showed signs of stabilization after Xi and Trump met in South Korea in October, where the two sides agreed to a fragile trade armistice.
Is China irked by India’s tariff cuts?
With the new tariff structure, India now has a clear advantage over competing export economies in the region, with lower tariff rates than Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam. Compared to China and Pakistan, India now has much lower tariffs. In such a situation, it is also being speculated that seeing India benefiting, Jinping might have appealed to Trump regarding his trade and appealed to reduce the tariff. The reason for this is that if the tariff on India is lower than China, then American trade with India will increase, while it will decrease with China.