President Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One as he boards upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Md. on May 12, 2026, for a trip to China to meet President Xi Jinping.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Donald Trump to meet China’s President Xi Jinping for discussing Taiwan issues. (Image used for representational purpose only. File photo: X/ Mark Schiefelbein via AP)

President Donald Trump said Monday (October 20, 2025) that the U.S. commands “great respect” from Beijing and that he will reach a “fantastic deal” with Chinese President Xi Jinping when the two leaders meet soon.

Mr. Trump’s remarks come after Beijing infuriated him by expanding export controls on rare earth products that are used in smartphones, fighter jets, electric vehicles and more. Mr. Trump spoke as he hosted Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the White House, celebrating an agreement with the U.S. ally as a potential counterpoint to China’s near-monopoly in processing those critical minerals.

“I think we’re going to end up having a fantastic deal with China,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s going to be a great trade deal. It’s going to be fantastic for both countries, and it’s going to be fantastic for the entire world.”

When asked about China’s leverage, Mr. Trump said Beijing “threatened us with rare earths, and I threatened them with tariffs.” But he insisted his good relationship with Mr. Xi means they would work out ”a very fair deal.”

All eyes are on a potential meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi because any failure to reach some agreement raises the risk of destabilizing not only relations between the two superpowers but also the global economy.

Mr. Trump affirmed that he would meet with Mr. Xi this month on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a grouping of 21 economies. Beijing has not announced plans for Mr. Xi to make the trip to South Korea, but it’s not unusual for such details to emerge closer to the travel date.

The President has threatened to impose a new 100% tariff on China in response to Beijing’s expanded rules on rare earth products. And he said Monday that it has already had results.

“Now, they’re treating us with great respect,” Mr. Trump said. “Now, we’ll see what happens. I said, if we don’t make a deal, I’m putting on an additional 100% on November 1. I think we’ll make a deal.”

Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has levied additional 30% across-the-board tariffs on China. Mr. Trump said the total rate on Chinese goods is about 55% to 57% and the country has paid the U.S. “hundreds of billions of dollars worth of money for tariffs.”

Beijing, however, has indicated it would play hardball.

“Threatening high tariffs is not the right way to deal with China,” Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, said last week in response to Trump’s new tariffs threat.

At the meeting with Albanese, Trump said he has other options to use against China: “They can’t get parts for their airplanes. We build their airplanes.”

Still, he said he prefers reaching a deal. “I want to be good to China. I love my relationship with President Xi,” Mr. Trump said.

Meanwhile, Li Chenggang has been ousted as China’s top trade negotiator after co-leading the last four rounds of talks with the U.S. In a routine, bullet-style announcement of removals and appointments, Beijing said Monday that Li was removed from his post as China’s permanent representative to the World Trade Organization. No reason was given.

He was replaced by Li Yongjie, deputy international trade representative, who recently held trade talks with Ecuador.

The announcement coincided with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent criticisms of Li Chenggang. At a press conference last week, Bessent made a rare public airing of displeasure, saying Li “showed up here with very incendiary language on August 28,” has “gone rogue” and was “very disrespectful.”

“He showed up uninvited in Washington and said, quote, China will cause global chaos if the port shipping fees go through,” Mr. Bessent said, referring to the U.S. plan to charge port fees on China-linked vessels.

Late last week, Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng had a video call with Mr. Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. The sides held a “candid, in-depth and constructive exchange” and agreed to hold a new round of trade talks as soon as possible, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency.

Mr. Bessent said last week that he and his Chinese counterpart would likely meet in Malaysia soon to prepare for a leaders summit.

Published – October 21, 2025 04:27 am IST

U.S. President Donald Trump (L) with China’s President Xi Jinping. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House
| Photo Credit: Reuters

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Beijing:

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday told US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Washington needs to approach the issue of Taiwan “prudently”, the ministry in Beijing said, as the pair held their first talks since Donald Trump took office.

“We will never allow Taiwan to be separated from China,” Wang said, adding that Washington “must not betray its promise” to abide by the one-China policy, according to a readout of their telephone conversation provided by his ministry. 

While Beijing had “no intention of surpassing or replacing anyone”, it maintained its “legitimate right to development”, he said. 

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring the self-ruled island under its control. 

The United States is a longtime supporter of Taiwan and its largest supplier of weapons, but does not formally recognise it diplomatically.

The State Department has not yet commented on the Wang-Rubio talks. 

But in his Senate confirmation hearing last week, Rubio said that a “dangerous” China had cheated its way to superpower status and vowed to ramp up support to deter any invasion of Taiwan.

In their call, Wang told Rubio that the world’s top two economies should work to find “the right way to get along in the new era” — presumably referring to Trump’s return to the US presidency. 

The Chinese minister said the pair should follow the lead of China’s Xi Jinping and Trump in setting the tone for relations at a “new important juncture,” the ministry said.

Both sides should “maintain communication, manage differences, expand cooperation, and promote the stable, healthy and sustainable development of China-US relations, finding the right way for China and the United States to get along in the new era”, the readout quoted Wang as saying. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A giant electronic board shows CCTV broadcasting news of U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration outside a mall in Beijing, on January 21, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday (January 21, 2025) said his team is discussing imposing a 10% tariff on China starting February 1 based on the fact that the latter is sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada.

“We’re talking about a tariff of 10 per cent on China based on the fact that they’re sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada,” Trump told reporters at a joint news conference at the White House along with Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, and Open AI CEO Sam Altman.

Also read | Trump 2.0 as disruptor of the global legal order

In response to a question, Trump said he is looking at February 1 as the date for the tariffs.

“For Mexico and China, we’re talking about approximately 25% [tariff],” the [resident said. Responding to another query, Trump said he did not “talk too much about tariffs” when he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week.

When asked if he has asked Xi Jinping to intervene to stop the war in Ukraine, Trump said China has not done very much on that.

“He’s got a lot of power. I said you ought to get it settled. I had that talk with President Xi the other day too. I said we don’t want that crap in our country. We’ve got to stop it. I would have stopped it. I had to deal with him where he was going to give the maximum penalty, which in China is death penalty, for drug dealing and he was all set,” Trump said.

“He was going to give the maximum penalty to fentanyl dealers if they send [the staff] to the United States. And of course, Biden didn’t pick that up. I had that deal all done. It was all wrapped up,” he added.

“We were going to get it done and then the election went — let’s put it nicely. It didn’t go the proper way. I’m trying to be nice about it. It [election] was rigged and we had an incompetent president elected who never followed up on that deal,” Trump said.

He added that if there was death penalty, “they wouldn’t be sending fentanyl to Mexico, Canada and other places”.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s computer was hacked and unclassified files were accessed as part of a broader breach of the Treasury Department by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday (January 16, 2025), citing two people familiar with the matter.

The computers of two of Ms. Yellen’s lieutenants, Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo and Acting Under Secretary Brad Smith, were also breached, the report said.

The hackers accessed fewer than 50 files on Ms. Yellen’s machine, Bloomberg said.

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a Reuters‘ request for a comment.

The hack, what the Treasury called a “major incident”, happened in December when Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached the department’s computer security guardrails by compromising third-party cybersecurity service provider BeyondTrust, according to Treasury officials.

“China has always opposed all forms of hacker attacks,” Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said at the time.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin meets with his Japanese counterpart Gen Nakatani (not pictured) on the day of their talks at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo, Japan on December 10, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

China’s “coercive behaviour” threatens regional stability, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday, after Taiwan said Beijing was carrying out its biggest maritime mobilisation around the self-ruled island in years.

The Pentagon chief is in Tokyo on what will likely be his last official Asia-Pacific trip, as the United States and Japan prepare for a new era shaped by incoming president Donald Trump’s protectionist policies.

Trump, who will be sworn in next month, hopes to replace Austin with Pete Hegseth, a former military officer and Fox News presenter.

“Now we’re clear-eyed about the challenges to peace and stability in this region and worldwide,” Austin said as he met his Japanese counterpart Gen Nakatani on Tuesday evening.

“That includes coercive behavior by the People’s Republic of China in the East China Sea and the South China Sea and elsewhere in the region,” Mr. Austin said.

“It includes Russia’s reckless war of choice in Ukraine, and it includes the DPRK (North Korea) support for Moscow’s war, as well as its other destabilising and provocative activities,” he added.

Mr. Austin, who is on his 13th trip to Asia as defence secretary, vowed that “America’s extended deterrence commitment to Japan and to the Republic of Korea is ironclad”, adding that the “US-Japan alliance has never been stronger”.

He did not mention Taiwan, the self-ruled island that China claims, directly in his remarks.

Earlier in the day, a senior Taiwanese security official said nearly 90 Chinese naval and coast guard ships were in waters along the so-called first island chain, which links Japan’s Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines.

China regards Taiwan as its territory and has not ruled out using force to bring it under its control.

At the meeting on Tuesday, Japan’s Defence Minister said the regional security situation was “growing ever more severe”.

Nakatani also praised Mr. Austin for his initiative in “strengthening and cementing the deterrence of the Japan-US alliance”.

Around 54,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Japan, mostly in Okinawa, east of Taiwan.

Protectionism

“These are very dynamic times,” Mr. Austin told Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at a separate meeting earlier on Tuesday.

“May our alliance remain the cornerstone of peace and stability in this region for the foreseeable future.”

Analysts predict that Trump’s protectionism will mean less cash from Washington for security in the region, with investors betting on Japan upgrading its own military capacities.

The country is already in the process of doubling its military spending to the NATO standard of two percent of GDP.

Having for decades relied on the United States for military hardware, Japan is also developing a new fighter jet with EU member Italy and Britain which is set to be airborne by 2035.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s brief declaration of martial law last week, and the ensuing political turmoil, reportedly led to a planned Seoul leg being cut from Austin’s itinerary.

This “significantly undercut” the value of his Asia trip, Daisuke Kawai, deputy director of the University of Tokyo’s economic security research programme, told AFP, citing a lost last-minute chance for Washington to solidify its ties with the pair.

But the outgoing defence chief’s trip remains a chance for Washington to assure its closest ally that it “won’t abandon Japan even after Trump swings back to power”, Kawai said.

Tokyo was also keen to strengthen ties to “leave Trump less room for a policy change”, he added.

The American Dream has always attracted students from developing nations and Chinese students have always dominated the international student population in US universities. 

However, recent statistics indicate a significant shift in this trend. According to the US State Department and the Institute of International Education, Indian students have surpassed Chinese students as the largest group of international students in American higher education – for the first time since 2009.

India made up 29% of international students, but China was still a major source, constituting about one-fourth of international students.

It is worthwhile to note that 40% of Indians are under 25 which is promising for the country’s economy as compared to China, where the population has just begun to age.

According to a report by CNN, experts attribute this decline to significant shifts in both policy and public perception. Many Chinese students and families are concerned about safety, racism, and discrimination in the US. The COVID-19 pandemic has also exacerbated these concerns, with a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and racism.

The downward spiral in US-China relations has also contributed to the decline. The Trump administration’s policies, including the cancellation of the Fulbright exchange program with China and the introduction of a ban on graduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students from several Chinese universities, have made it difficult for Chinese students to secure visas.

The decline in Chinese students in the US doesn’t necessarily mean there’s less appetite for an overseas education. Instead, students and parents are exploring alternative options. Countries like Canada, the UK, and Australia have introduced more immigration-friendly policies, making them attractive alternatives to the US.

India’s growing population and increasing demand for higher education have contributed to the surge in Indian students in the US. With over 331,600 Indian students in the US last academic year, India has become the largest source of international students in American higher education.

The allure of an American education may be wearing off for some Chinese students. With improving educational quality in China and growing concerns about safety and racism in the US, some students are opting to stay in China or explore alternative destinations.