U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly asked Chinese President Xi Jinping if he was interested in purchasing American weapons, according to comments made by U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue.
The U.S. State Department quickly clarified that there are no plans or proposals to sell weapons to China. However, the remarks come at a time when the U.S. has paused arms sales to Taiwan, raising questions about the context.
The controversy began during an interview with Fox News on September 27, when Perdue explained that the U.S. sells weapons to various countries and stated, “President Trump has actually asked President Xi if he wants to buy American weapons.”
It remains unclear whether this question was posed during Xi's recent state visit to the U.S. or during a previous summit, and how Xi responded was not disclosed.
Following the revelation of Perdue's comments, the State Department moved to mitigate the situation. A department official told the South China Morning Post on September 28, “U.S. law prohibits the sale of weapons to China, and there are no proposals or plans to sell weapons to China.”
Nonetheless, the comments have drawn attention as they emerged while the U.S. government is withholding approximately $14 billion in arms sales to Taiwan ahead of a U.S.-China summit.
Jack Cooper, an Asia security expert at the American Enterprise Institute and former Defense Department and White House official, told the Financial Times, “It is shocking that President Trump is proposing weapons to China while hesitating to approve arms sales to Taiwan.”
Ryan Hass, director of the China Center at the Brookings Institution, noted on social media that this could create anxiety among U.S. allies directly exposed to Chinese threats.
Some analysts interpret Perdue's remarks as part of Trump's negotiation strategy regarding Taiwan. Dennis Simon, a researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, suggested to the South China Morning Post that Trump may have intended to use the arms sales to Taiwan as leverage in negotiations with China, given China's opposition to such sales. This could imply a strategy of assessing what concessions China might offer in exchange for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
There are also questions about why Ambassador Perdue chose to publicly discuss such a sensitive topic. Scott Kennedy, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, expressed confusion over why Perdue thought it wise to make such comments publicly.
Given the military relations between the U.S. and China, Perdue's remarks are considered unusual. The U.S. and China expanded military cooperation in the 1980s to jointly respond to the Soviet Union, but military collaboration significantly declined after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. Since then, the U.S. has restricted the transfer of American defense materials to the Chinese military, and as strategic competition between the U.S. and China has intensified, U.S. military policy has focused on countering China's military expansion.
* This article has been translated by AI.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.