Beijing: President Xi Jinping spoke with his US counterpart Donald Trump over the telephone on Wednesday, hours after his talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, during which the Chinese leader proposed a “grand plan” to advance close ties between Beijing and Moscow. It was also their first conversation since their last phone call in November, which came amid a sudden worsening in China-Japan relations.
It is rare for the Chinese leader to hold talks with Trump and Putin on the same day.
President Xi on Wednesday talked with President Trump over phone, state-run Xinhua news agency reported, without providing details. Xi’s talks with both leaders came a day before Russia’s New START Treaty with the US – a nuclear arms agreement signed in 2010 - is set to expire.
Trump wants China to join the new treaty. Beijing, however, declined, saying its nuclear weapons stockpile is not as big as that of Russia and the US. The talks between Trump and Xi comes on a day when the US is hosting a meeting of top officials from 50 countries to counter
China’s dominance of the precious rare-earth metals, keeping a tight lid on exports.
The meeting is seen as a joint global response to stiff restrictions imposed last year by China,
which accounts for about 70 per cent of global rare earth mining and nearly 90 per cent of their processing.
The minerals are critical for manufacturing electronics, automobiles, wind energy, defence equipment and a host of modern gadgets.
Beijing halted the exports of the key elements to the US, India and many other countries last year, resulting in disruption of the supply chains of the critical materials.
Trump has also pulled back on high tariffs as China negotiated a quid pro quo deal to resume rare-earth supplies to the US, lifting a ban on exports of semiconductor chips, besides
lowering tariffs.
Earlier in his talks with Putin, Xi said that the international situation had “grown increasingly turbulent” since the start of the year.
Xi told Putin that a “grand plan” is needed to develop ties between China and Russia, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
“China and Russia have an obligation to encourage the international community to uphold fairness and justice … resolutely defend the international system with the UN at its core and the basic norms of international law, and work together to maintain global strategic stability,” Xi was quoted as saying.
Their call came after the recent meetings between the defence ministers and national security advisers of China and Russia. Close allies China and Russia stepped up their strategic dialogue at various levels to deepen
their cooperation.