Donald Trump asked President Xi Jinping whether Beijing wanted to buy American weapons, the US ambassador to China said on Sunday, prompting the State Department to quickly rule out any such deal with Washington’s principal strategic competitor.
“He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point,” the ambassador David Perdue said on Fox News after Xi’s state visit to the White House last week. He did not say when Trump raised the question, what prompted it, or how the Chinese leader responded.
A State Department official, speaking on background to the South China Morning Post, said: “US law prohibits arms sales to China and there is no offer or plan to sell arms to China.”
The swift clarification came as the disclosure ricocheted among Asia specialists, who noted the extraordinary contrast between Trump reportedly raising the prospect of arming Beijing and his administration continuing to hold up a roughly US$14 billion weapons package for Taiwan.
