TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said on Tuesday that he was not worried that U.S. President Donald Trump would “abandon” the island at his upcoming meeting this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea.
Since taking office earlier this year, Trump has vacillated on his position towards China-claimed Taiwan as he seeks to strike a trade deal with Beijing. Trump says Xi has told him he will not invade while the Republican leader is in office, but is also yet to approve any new U.S. arms sales to Taipei.
The fear in Taipei, which has long enjoyed strong unofficial support from Washington, is that the Trump-Xi meeting this week in South Korea on the sidelines of the APEC summit could see some sort of “selling out” of Taiwan’s interests by Trump to Xi.
Asked whether he was worried Trump would “abandon” Taiwan at the Xi talks, Lin told reporters in Taipei: “No, because our Taiwan-U.S. relations are very stable”.
“No matter whether on security, trade and business and other areas, there is close cooperation,” he added.
The United States, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic ties with China, but is bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself, and the issue is a frequent irritant in Sino-U.S. relations.
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum is one of the few international groupings that Taiwan takes part in, though it does not send its president in order to avoid political problems with China.
Speaking at the airport before leaving for South Korea, Taiwan’s APEC representative, former economy minister Lin Hsin-i, said the summit was a good opportunity for “equal interactions” with other members attending.
Beijing has ramped up its military and diplomatic pressure against Taiwan over the past five years, including regularly sending warplanes and warships into the skies and waters near the island.
On Tuesday, police in the Chinese city of Chongqing said they had opened a probe into Taiwanese lawmaker Puma Shen, from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, for engaging in “separatist” activity.
“It does not matter, in any case the people of Taiwan are not scared,” Shen wrote in response on his Threads account.
The move is mostly symbolic as China’s legal system has no jurisdiction in Taiwan.
Taiwan’s government says Beijing has no right to claim or speak for the island internationally, and that only the Taiwanese people can decide their own future.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Stephen Coates and Michael Perry)
