Donald Trump hailed his “wonderful relationship” with Xi Jinping during talks at the G20 – although his felicitations were undermined when the White House mistakenly referred to the Communist party chief as the president of Taiwan.



Trump and the Chinese president met for more than 90 minutes in Hamburg on Saturday afternoon with North Korea’s nuclear programme and trade dominating the agenda.

Trump struck a superficially friendly note, despite mounting tensions between the world’s top two economies. “It’s an honour to have you as a friend,” he told Xi according to a statement from the White House press secretary.

However, the US statement contained a critical error. Rather than referring to Xi by his correct title – president of the People’s Republic of China – it identified him as president of the Republic of China, the official name for Taiwan.

Taiwan’s democratically elected president is Tsai Ing-wen, a London School of Economics graduate who is both the most powerful woman in the Chinese-speaking world and one of Xi Jinping’s arch rivals.

China specialists immediately picked up on the blunder – as, too, would have Beijing. “What a bunch of amateurs,” tweeted Bill Bishop, the publisher of Sinocism, a newsletter about China’s economy and politics.



“It’s a pretty major faux pas,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies.



Similar slips have occurred under previous administrations. When Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, toured the US in 2006 George W Bush’s White House committed its own diplomatic gaffe by introducing the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China as that of Taiwan.

Still, Glaser said observers would be quick to blame the error on Trump’s “somewhat unusual” style of governance and failure to fill many government positions. “It is a bit of a loss of face for Xi Jinping – it probably won’t be too widely reported [in China],” she predicted. “And maybe it will give Tsai Ing-wen a good laugh.”

In the lead-up to Saturday’s talks experts had warned relations between Washington and Beijing were heading on to the rocks after their leaders failed to agree on how to thwart the nuclear ambitions of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Last week Kim conducted his first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Speaking on Saturday, Trump, who has been trying to convince Beijing to increase pressure on Pyongyang, said he would “eventually” succeed in solving the North Korea problem. “There will be success in the end one way or the other.” Trump also vowed to resolve trade “imbalances … We’re going to turn that around.”

According to a Chinese account of the meeting Xi told Trump he hoped for “healthy and stable” ties despite “sensitive issues”. China’s official news agency, Xinhua, said there was “an in-depth exchange of views” about North Korea.

Glaser said it was hard to gauge whether Xi and Trump had reached any new understanding on North Korea. “My guess is that they have decided at least some of the things that Xi Jinping will do, although maybe they won’t talk about it publicly. Xi cannot look like he is making concessions under pressure from Trump. That would certainly be very damaging for him domestically.”

Glaser predicted Xi would offer to take further action, possibly by shutting down some of the banks and front companies in north-east China that help prop up the North Korean regime. “Xi Jinping does not want a rupture in the US-China relationship and there are things that he is willing to do,” she said. However, Glaser questioned whether those moves would meet Trump’s expectations or again leave him “frustrated and disappointed – and going back to Xi Jinping again”.

