Trump set to meet Xi next month, visit China next year
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone-call on Friday, during which they agreed to meet face-to-face in six weeks in South Korea, and for Trump to visit the Asian superpower early next year.
In a social media post, Trump also said Xi would come to the US at a later date. However, the phone-call did not yield any concrete direction on the fate of TikTok, which many American lawmakers wish to ban in the US.
The two sides appeared to lower tensions during the first call in three months between the leaders of the two superpowers. Trump while on the campaign trail bashed China relentlessly as an enemy but since returning to office has spoken of his strong relationship with Xi.
“We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal,” Trump wrote on social media, referring to Friday’s call.
“The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!” Trump wrote.
The phone meeting comes after Xi organized a major summit this month with the leaders of Russia and India — and invited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to observe a major military parade in Beijing to mark the end of World War II.
TikTok’s fate
The US Congress last year during Joe Biden’s presidency passed a law to force TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell its US operations for national security reasons or face the ban of the app.
US policymakers, including in Trump’s first term, have warned that China could use TikTok to mine data from Americans or exert influence on what they see on social media.
During Friday’s call, they also discussed the TikTok debacle, but it was not immediately clear that the call had yielded the expected firm agreement over the fate of the popular short-video app in the US.
The leaders did agree to further talks on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that starts on 31 October in Gyeongju, South Korea to discuss trade, illicit drugs and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trump has declined to enforce the TikTok law while his administration looks for a new owner, but also because he worries a ban on the app would anger TikTok’s huge user base and disrupt political communications.
“I like TikTok; it helped get me elected,” Trump said during a press conference on Thursday.
Beijing’s final approval of a framework deal reached by the two sides earlier this week is one of the hurdles Trump needed to clear to keep TikTok open. Congress had ordered the app shut down for US users by January 2025 if its US assets weren’t sold by Chinese owner ByteDance.
Trump’s statement did not detail what such progress was and China’s statement made no reference to any agreement on TikTok specifically.
China offered a sterner take on the talks
“On the TikTok issue, Xi noted that China’s position is clear: the Chinese government respects the will of enterprises and welcomes them to conduct business negotiations based on market rules, to reach solutions that balance interests and comply with Chinese laws and regulations,” state broadcaster CCTV said.
“China hopes the US side will provide an open, fair, and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies investing in the United States.”
It described the call as “frank and in-depth.”
