Trump says Xi assured him that China would not take any action on Taiwan during the Republican’s term

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping gave him assurances that Beijing would take no action toward its long-stated goal of unifying Taiwan with mainland China while the Republican leader is in office.

Trump said the long-contentious issue of Taiwan did not come up in his talks with Xi on Thursday in South Korea, which largely focused on trade tensions between the United States and China. But the US President expressed his certainty that China would not take action regarding Taiwan while he was in office.

He watches: Former deputy national security adviser says Trump-Xi deal is a ‘fragile truce’

“He has said outright, and his people have said outright in meetings: We will never do anything while President Trump is president, because they know the consequences,” Trump said in an excerpt from an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday.

US officials have long been concerned about the possibility of China using military force against Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims as part of its territory.

The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which governs US relations with the island, does not require the US to intervene militarily if it invades China, but it makes it US policy to ensure Taiwan has the resources to defend itself and prevent any unilateral change in Beijing’s status.

When asked whether he would order US forces to defend Taiwan if China attacked, Trump demurred. The United States, both in Republican and Democratic administrations, has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” regarding Taiwan – trying not to lose sight of whether the United States would come to the island’s aid in such a scenario.

“You’ll find out if that happens, and he understands the answer to that,” Trump said of Xi.

Liu Bingyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, did not directly respond to an inquiry about whether Trump had received any assurances from Xi or Chinese officials about Taiwan. He stressed in a statement that China “will never allow any person or force to separate Taiwan from China in any way.”

The statement added, “The Taiwan issue is China’s internal matter, and is the core of China’s basic interests. How to resolve the Taiwan issue is a matter for the Chinese people ourselves, and only the Chinese people can decide.”

The White House also did not provide further details about when Xi or Chinese officials informed Trump that military action in Taiwan was off the table for the duration of the Republican’s presidency.

The interview was recorded on “60 Minutes” on Friday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. It was Trump’s first appearance on the show since he settled a lawsuit this summer with CBS News over the news magazine’s interview with Kamala Harris.

The rest of the interview is scheduled to air later on Sunday.