Did China Take ‘The Deal’

By all appearances, China’s President Xi Jinpeng took the deal President Trump offered him in Beijing.

At their joint press conference on Thursday, President Trump said that he and Xi were “united” when it came to Iran: no nukes, open the Strait of Hormuz without Iranian blackmail, and no Chinese weapons sales.

And while President Trump said before the summit he didn’t need Chinese help with Iran, after their initial meeting he told Sean Hannity that China will help “in any way it can.”

If all of this comes true, it is very bad news for Tehran.

Trump offered China a choice: enjoy your new status as the G2 with the United States, along with a $400 billion trade relationship that will continue to expand; or enjoy your missile sales to Iran and your dependence on Iranian oil.

The Iranians just watched as their biggest ally went over to the enemy.

The United States has a long history of playing the Chinese against the Russians, starting with Nixon’s famous trip to China in 1972.

Trump never made the same type of effusive statements with Putin during his first term, before the Ukraine war. Nor did he travel to meet Putin with a plane-load of US corporate CEOs.

A $400 billion trade relationship with Russia? Russian corporate investment in the United States? Are you kidding? All they have to sell are weapons and oil. And while they would love to get their hands on our high tech, why in the world would we sell it to them or allow them to invest in our companies?

Trump is not a China hawk. But neither is he a China appeaser.

On Taiwan, he was extremely cautious. He said he understood how strongly Xi felt about Taiwan and how much they wanted it back, but that he felt Xi didn’t want to go war to achieve that. He also told reporters on Air Force One that America didn’t need a war “9500 miles” from home.

When asked whether he had discussed a pending arms sales to Taiwan with Xi, Trump said Xi had raised the subject and yes, they had discussed it.

That prompted New York Times reporter David Sanger, whom Trump called the “fake news” and even “treasonous” for his false reporting on the extent of Iran’s surviving missile capabilities, to ask him if that meant he was revoking President Reagan’s 1982 pledge not to consult with the PRC on arms sales to Taiwan.

“1982?” Trump said. “That’s quite a long time ago.”

The 1982 pledge was part of the so-called “Six Assurances” that allowed the Reagan administration to expand relations with China while not throwing Taiwan under the bus.

All six were expressed as negatives. “We have not agreed to prior consultations on arms sales to Taiwan,” reads one. “We have not agreed to take any position regarding sovereignty over Taiwan,” reads another.

President Trump made clear he was not taking any position over Taiwan’s sovereignty, and pointedly would not tell Xi, when asked, whether the United States would defend Taiwan if China invaded.

But I can just about guarantee you that the New York Times will blast him for throwing Taiwan under the bus because he discussed the pending arms sale to Taiwan with President Xi.

Let’s recall that Bill Clinton was a China hawk when he ran for president against George H.W. Bush in 1992. Indeed, I helped draft a speech for the campaign that blasted the elder Bush for “cozying up to dictators from Baghdad to Beijing.”

But he soon turned into a China appeaser, once emissaries from Chinese military intelligence, working through the Lippo Group in Indonesia, bailed out his bankrupt campaign in October 1992 by handing over a briefcase containing $3 million in cash during a famous limo ride.

In the early months of his first term, Clinton put into motion the “China Plan” drafted by three relatively obscure academics in a 1992 National Academy of Sciences study. (The authors were William Perry, who went on to become Clinton’s Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter, who succeeded Perry as SecDef, and Mitchel Wallerstein, who was put in charge of the Pentagon’s export control office.)

The plan called export controls a “wasting asset” and called for removing them for China. Bill Clinton added the sauce: millions of secret campaign cash from Communist China and their cutouts. (I wrote about this extensively in the American Spectator in the 1990s and in a 2000 book, Selling Out America).

Among the sales that allowed China to leap-frog its way to building 5th generation stealth fighter jets were the advanced machine tools used in the B-1 bomber plant in Columbus, Ohio. I was fired from Time Magazine in July 1994 for reporting on that.

But President Trump is no China appeaser as Clinton was. He gave the Chinese very little during this trip. For example, he made no commitment to Xi that he would remove Chinese companies from US sanctions for buying Iranian oil, or that he would allow Chinese ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz.

The proof of the pudding will be if the Chinese stop supplying Iran with drone parts and sodium perchlorate, an oxydizer used to make solid rocket fuel.

During Epic Fury, four cargos of Chinese sodium perchlorate reached Iran, while China airlifted other weapons to Tehran once the ceasefire kicked in.

If they stop these sales, Trump will be pleased and good things will happen. If they don’t, you can expect Chinese ships to remain blocked in the Persian Gulf or intercepted by the US blockade.

I discuss the Beijing summit, Trump’s growing frustration with Iran, and Russia’s latest ICBM, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend.
 
As always, you can listen live on 104.9 FM or 550 AM in the Jacksonville, Florida area, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app. If you miss us live, catch the podcast later, here.

Yours in freedom.

©2026 Kenneth R. Timmerman. All rights reserved.

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