BEIJING, April 30 - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday that both countries should prepare for "important high-level exchanges" and warned that the Taiwan issue represents "the biggest point of risk" for China-U.S. relations.
Wang stressed to Rubio that "The Taiwan issue concerns China’s core interests," and urged the United States to "keep its promises and make the right choices in order to open up new space for China-U.S. cooperation and make due efforts for world peace," according to an official summary of the call released by Wang’s ministry.
The telephone conversation arrived in the run-up to a planned mid-May summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, underscoring Taiwan’s prominence on Beijing’s agenda ahead of that meeting.
The two ministers had last met face-to-face in Munich in February, a period when trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies had eased. The readout reiterated past references to a fragile tariff truce that was reached during a Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea last October.
Wang told Rubio that "Under the strategic guidance of President Xi Jinping and President Trump, China-U.S. relations have generally remained stable." The Chinese statement also noted that last Thursday’s call was the first publicly known conversation between the two men since the United States and Israel began strikes against Iran on February 28.
Wang urged both sides to protect "the hard-won stability, make good preparations for agendas of important high-level interactions, expand cooperation, and manage differences." The official readout said the pair also discussed the situation in the Middle East but did not provide further details on that portion of the exchange.
The conversation and the ministry summary place Taiwan at the center of Beijing’s concerns in advance of the expected summit and frame the call as part of broader efforts to stabilise ties while preparing for high-level diplomacy.