Trump advisers point to China’s measured reaction but experts say Beijing leaders will be privately enraged and unnerved

Donald Trump’s controversial decision to hold a 10-minute phone call with Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, was caused by the billionaire’s lack of foreign policy experience, a mouthpiece for the Chinese government has claimed.



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In an editorial published on Sunday, the China Daily, a state-run English-language newspaper, said the affair had “exposed nothing but his and his transition team’s inexperience in dealing with foreign affairs”.

Many had predicted that the call – the first known contact of its kind in almost four decades – would elicit a ferocious response from China’s leaders, who regard Taiwan as a breakaway province that should one day be reunified with the mainland.

However, Beijing’s public response has so far been measured, with the foreign ministry lodging a “solemn representation” with Washington and the foreign minister, Wang Yi, downplaying the development as “a petty move” by Taiwan.

The China Daily echoed that position on Sunday, reflecting what experts said was Beijing’s apparent desire not to immediately lock itself into a public confrontation with the US president-elect. The newspaper said there was “no need to over-interpret” the property tycoon’s “unusual action”.

Trump advisers have claimed China’s low-key reaction proves Beijing has taken Friday’s phone conversation in its stride.

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But many China scholars believe the country’s Communist party leaders will have been both enraged and unnerved by the unexpected development.

John Delury, an east Asia expert from Yonsei University in Seoul, said the formal nature of China’s immediate response did not mean there was not real anger in Beijing. “I think it would be a mistake to think he got a pass. You don’t get a pass on Taiwan. So I think it goes in his file,” he said.

“They are holding their fire but they are sizing him up. I think a classic mistake would be for Trump and his people to think: ‘Wow, we got away with it. We can do that. Great!’”

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Delury said much about Trump’s likely policies towards China remained a mystery.

It was impossible to know whether the conversation with Tsai reflected the incoming president’s incompetence or, in fact, heralded the arrival of a major strategic shift in US policy the region.

In the wake of Friday’s call Beijing would now be preparing for a “provocative Taiwan policy”, Delury added. “That’s what this looks like to them. He is being provocative. He is waving a red flag. He is being insulting. He is breaking with all the protocol that has been carefully established.”

“Obviously this helps them size up Trump, this helps them get a read on how he is going to behave. And for Beijing this kind of behaviour is unacceptable. From their perspective this is not a peripheral issue. This is the core issue. This is also the core issue in US-China relations. And when the US president pokes his finger in this one, it is a hornets nest.”

Shen Dingli, a prominent Chinese foreign policy expert from Shanghai’s Fudan University, told the New York Times such behaviour from Trump could not be tolerated once he reached the White House. “I would close our embassy in Washington and withdraw our diplomats,” Shen said. “I would be perfectly happy to end the relationship.”