WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday that he had accepted an invitation from Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to visit Beijing in April. That occurred while the two leaders discussed several major issues between their nations, including Taiwan, the Ukraine war and lackluster Chinese purchases of American soybeans, according to separate official accounts of their call earlier in the day.

In an unusual move, the call was initiated by Xi, and it came after weeks of rising tensions between China and Japan over Taiwan. It also followed a weekend in which top aides to Trump pushed Ukrainian officials in Geneva to move forward on terms of a proposed peace settlement with Russia, China’s partner — a settlement that Russian leaders have not agreed to.

Trump told reporters in late October that he would visit Beijing in April after he and Xi held a summit in South Korea. U.S. and Chinese officials meeting then in Busan agreed to a yearlong truce that has rolled back many of the tariffs Trump imposed on China, and the retaliatory measures Beijing took in return.

Trump Speaks With Xi

In a social media post Monday afternoon, Trump said it was a “very good telephone call” that touched on Ukraine, China’s exports of chemicals used to make fentanyl and its purchases of farm products.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters outside the White House on Monday that Trump spoke with Xi about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she said, but “the focus was mainly on the trade deal that we are working on with China.”

Trump and Leavitt did not mention Taiwan in their summaries. But Chinese state news organizations stressed that Xi had “clarified China’s principled position” on Taiwan, a self-governing, democratic island that China lays claim to. Xi emphasized “that Taiwan’s return to China is an important part of the postwar international order,” state news reports said.

The issue of Taiwan did not come up at the summit in Busan. However, tensions over Taiwan between China and Japan, America’s closest ally in Asia, have soared this month. Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, told parliament on Nov. 7 that an attempt by China to blockade or invade Taiwan could prompt Japan to intervene with military force. China threatened reprisals.

Former President Joe Biden vowed that the U.S. military would defend Taiwan against any Chinese invasion. Trump has been more circumspect and has not said what he would do if China tried to seize Taiwan.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Ana Swanson, Alan Rappeport and Edward Wong/Haiyun Jiang
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