President Trump meets with Xi and Gaoichi, dispute over Taiwan unlikely to be resolved soon

A flurry of phone calls between US President Donald Trump and the leaders of Japan and China have so far done little to calm the diplomatic spat between China and Tokyo. Experts warn that it remains unclear whether the crisis will subside.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi spoke with President Trump on Tuesday, hours after holding a separate phone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In his remarks to the media after his phone call with President Trump, Takaichi said that during the conversation they discussed relations with China. The spate of calls followed a controversy sparked by Takaichi’s recent comments over how Japan would respond to China’s attack on Taiwan.

According to an official statement from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, President Xi pressed President Trump on Taiwan in a phone conversation on Monday and asked for U.S. cooperation in preserving the post-World War II international order.

However, President Trump did not mention Taiwan in his Truth Social post after his phone call with President Xi, saying only that they discussed the war in Ukraine, fentanyl, and soy, among other things. The US president also visited Beijing in April, and Xi said he plans to make a state visit to the US in late 2026.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that President Xi took the unusual step of requesting a meeting with President Trump.

Andy Rothman, founder of China advisory firm Synology, said China’s statements emphasized Taiwan and suggested Xi hoped to use his influence with Gao Shi to persuade Trump to soften his rhetoric on cross-strait issues.

The Chinese government has demanded that Gaoichi retract his comments about Taiwan, but the Japanese prime minister did not retract his comments, although he said he would avoid discussing specific future scenarios.

“Ms. Gaoichi cannot take back her statements, and the Chinese government knows it. Gaoichi’s crimes clearly illustrate why the Chinese government is punishing her…As long as Gaoichi remains prime minister, it is unlikely that relations will improve significantly,” said David Bowling and Jeremy Chan, analysts at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.

Alice Han, China director at advisory firm Greenvale, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” that Mr. Xi is “prioritizing Taiwan as part of his legacy.”

Meanwhile, Han said the Trump administration is “much more reluctant” to sacrifice blood and treasure on the Taiwan issue than its predecessor, preferring instead to focus on U.S.-China trade relations.

Analysts said Beijing’s approach to the United States was an unusual diplomatic opening for the United States, which has sought U.S. intervention to curb tensions with Japan, and saw little benefit in further escalating tensions.

But President Trump and the White House have remained publicly silent.

“President Trump’s silence on the Sino-Japanese dispute must be worrying both Taipei and Tokyo,” said Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University.

The Chinese government has sought to exert economic influence over Tokyo, restricting imports of Japanese seafood, advising citizens to avoid traveling to Japan, and calling on residents in the country to be especially cautious.

“If the Chinese government escalates and starts using military coercion, we will likely see a stronger response from the U.S. government,” said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

But analysts say both countries have strong reasons to prevent the conflict from escalating into armed conflict, even as Beijing increases economic pressure on Tokyo.

Analysts at Eurasia Group said: “Both countries want to avoid military conflict, keeping the chances of an unintended conflict between China and Japan fairly low.”

But they added that bilateral relations may not improve in the short term, citing past examples of China’s economic repression of South Korea and Australia that took years to resolve.

In 2017, South Korean products faced a boycott in China, group travel was banned, and a “soft ban” on K-pop content followed Seoul’s deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system (also known as THAAD) in the country that year.

The day after China issued a travel warning to Japan, the Takauchi Cabinet dispatched a senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs official to Beijing to try to ease tensions, but to no avail.

Mr Thompson said the Chinese government had made clear there was “no room for compromise”. “Maybe we will live with this crisis for a little longer.”

— CNBC’s Martin Soong contributed to this report