Trump says he will visit China ‘early next year’

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

This is a breaking news story.

United States President Donald Trump has said he will visit China early next year after receiving an invitation from Beijing.

“I’ve been invited to go to China, and I’ll be doing that sometime fairly early next year. We have it sort of set,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday.

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The US President also said he expected to seal a “fair” trade deal in South Korea with President Xi Jinping later this month despite a recent row over tariffs.

He expressed confidence in his relationship with counterpart Xi, contradicting an earlier Pentagon assessment that China was planning to seize Taiwan in 2027.

“I think we’ll be just fine with China. China doesn’t want to do that,” he told reporters as he met Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

While Trump conceded that China had designs on Taiwan, describing it as the apple of Xi’s eye, he said the country would be deterred from invading, given its awareness that the United States “is the strongest military power in the world by far”.

“We have the best of everything, and nobody’s going to mess with that,” Trump said.

He declined to answer a question on whether he would sacrifice US support for Taiwan as part of an agreement with Xi.

Under US law, the United States is required to provide Taiwan weapons for its self-defence, but Washington has been deliberately ambiguous on whether it would use force to defend the flourishing democracy and technology hub.

This is a developing news story, more to come …