China’s Supposed Trump-Xi Summit Threat Gets Shot Down By Senior US Official

A new report claims China threatened to cancel President Donald Trump’s upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, but a senior U.S. official disputed the account.

Beijing reportedly reiterated to Washington that Taiwan remains a “red line” in relations between the two countries as preparations continue for Xi’s expected Sept. 24 visit to the White House, The Telegraph reported, citing multiple sources who spoke with Japan’s Kyodo News; however, a senior U.S. official close to the Trump administration told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Telegraph’s reporting is inaccurate.

The dispute centers on roughly $14 billion in U.S. arms sales to Taiwan that Congress previously approved, but that had not yet been formally notified by the administration, according to a bipartisan Senate Foreign Relations Committee letter sent to Trump in May. Trump later said he was holding the weapons sales “in abeyance” and described them as a “very good negotiating chip” during a May 15 Fox News interview.

The pending package would follow roughly $11.1 billion in proposed arms sales to Taiwan approved by the State Department and notified to Congress in December 2025, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

“If we’re not going to make arms available precisely because of pressure that Xi Jinping himself brought to bear, that’s kind of like asking the wolf if you should lock the chicken pen at night,” Jonathan Fritz, senior fellow for China policy at the Center for American Progress and a former senior State Department official focused on China, told the DCNF. “The wolf’s going to say no. I think it’s probably best that you leave the door unlocked. Thanks so much.”

The State Department and the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

“This is part of the usual rhetorical chest-thumping over the issue of Taiwan,” Allen Zhang, a research assistant in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “The Chinese side almost always issues these kinds of warnings at high-level meetings to remind Washington, and the rest of the world, that Taiwan is ‘the reddest of China’s red lines.’ But unless China follows through, which clearly is not in Beijing’s interest right now, this will likely be another round of tough talk with no bite.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday, with the two discussing preparations for upcoming high-level exchanges between Washington and Beijing, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The call suggests diplomatic preparations are continuing ahead of next week’s expected Trump-Xi meeting.

“Most likely this warning was not an attempt to pressure the U.S. or demand any concessions but rather a straightforward notification that if the U.S. went ahead with the arms sale immediately before the summit, it would be tremendously embarrassing to Xi Jinping,” Jake Werner, director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told the DCNF. “That would make going ahead with the summit untenable for the Chinese side. This sort of clear communication is desirable in a diplomatic relationship.”