Just days after sealing a trade truce with the United States that took months of negotiations, China has issued a stern warning to Washington, outlining four sensitive “red lines” that it says must not be crossed if the agreement is to hold.
The comments, delivered by China’s ambassador to the US, serve as a stark reminder that despite a de-escalation in the trade war, a vast array of deep-seated disagreements continues to test the volatile relationship between the two global superpowers.
Beijing’s four ‘red lines’ for Washington
In a virtual speech to the US-China Business Council, Ambassador Xie Feng detailed the four core issues where Beijing will not compromise.
He named Taiwan, democracy and human rights, China’s political system, and its development rights as the nation’s primary concerns, according to a report in Bloomberg.
Xie stressed that “the most important thing is to respect each other’s core interests and major concerns.”
He added that “the pressing priority is to follow up on the consensus reached between” President Xi and President Trump “to reassure both our countries and the world economy with concrete actions and outcomes.”
A truce tested by lingering tensions
The ambassador’s warning highlights the many ways the one-year truce, reached last week in South Korea, could unravel.
While the status of Taiwan did not come up in the talks between Trump and Xi, it remains a critical issue for Beijing, which views the self-governed island as lost territory.
The fragility of the relationship was underscored by separate talks on Friday, where US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth voiced “serious concerns” to his Chinese counterpart, Dong Jun, about Beijing’s naval activities around Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Furthermore, major disagreements over technology access remain unresolved.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that senior US officials had successfully convinced President Trump not to discuss next-generation AI chips with Xi, arguing that making Nvidia’s advanced Blackwell chips available to China posed a national security risk.
Conflicting outlooks on the path forward
Ambassador Xie warned that continued conflicts over tariffs, industry, or technology “will lead to nothing but a dead end.”
However, this cautious tone contrasts with a more optimistic view from others close to Beijing.
David Daokui Li, a regular policy adviser and economics professor at Tsinghua University, described the Xi-Trump agreement as a “breakthrough” because China was now being treated as an “equal partner.”
Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Li expressed a sense of enthusiasm in Beijing following the summit, suggesting that the ongoing trade, financial, and tech conflicts were “small potatoes” that would eventually be resolved.
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