China’s top diplomat said on Tuesday he hoped the incoming Trump administration would “make the right choice” and work with Beijing, hours after Donald Trump told reporters the COVID-19 pandemic had strained his relationship with “friend” Xi Jinping.
“We hope the new U.S. administration will make the right choice and work with China in a mutually-beneficial manner to remove disruptions and overcome obstacles,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a forum in Beijing, according to a statement from his ministry.
Reuters reports that the remarks followed President-elect Trump telling his first news conference since his election victory six weeks ago that Chinese President Xi Jinping had been a friend of his and that “he is an amazing guy” but that relations had been strained.
“We had a very good relationship until COVID,” Trump told reporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday when asked whether Xi would attend his inauguration. “COVID didn’t end the relationship, but it was a bridge too far for me.”
When Joe Biden was sworn in as U.S. president in January 2021, China said it wanted to cooperate with the new administration and imposed sanctions on former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and 27 other top officials previously under Trump.
The two superpowers have been setting out their positions ahead of Trump’s return to the White House. His first term resulted in a trade war that uprooted global supply chains and hurt almost every economy as inflation and borrowing costs shot up.
