Donald Trump: China may move on Taiwan after 2022 Olympics

Suggesting he would run again in 2024, Donald Trump tells Nigel Farage the US is ‘at its lowest point ever’ in global relations.

Donald Trump has suggested China will move on Taiwan after the Winter Olympics. Picture: AFP.

Donald Trump has warned China could seek to move on Taiwan after the Beijing Olympics, as top US and European officials meet in Washington to thrash out a collective response to growing Chinese aggression.

Hinting strongly he will run for president again in 2024, the former president said the US was at the “lowest point it’s ever been at”, suggesting US relations with China, Russia, North Korea were at a dangerously low ebb.

“They will wait until after the Olympics I assume, and perhaps something will happen,” he said, referring to fears China will seek to bring Taiwan forcibly back into Beijing’s orbit in the near future.

“No planes flying over Taiwan, the name wasn’t even mentioned you didn’t talk about Taiwan when I was president,” Mr Trump said, speaking to former UKIP leader Nigel Farage in an interview published Wednesday night London time.

Richard Fontaine, director of the Centre for New American Security, said it wasn’t clear more frequent displays of Chinese military provocation around Taiwan were related to the change in president.

“For a start they aren’t flying planes over Taiwan, but the Chinese have stepped up their military activity around Taiwan starting several years ago,” he told The Australian.

Separately, deputy secretary of State Wendy Sherman and top European diplomat Stefano Sannino kicked off a meeting in Washington on Thursday to collaborate on efforts to contain China.

“Certainly Taiwan will be a topic of discussion,” said a senior administration official, pointing to “the increasingly convergent US and EU outlooks on the PRC and its increasingly concerning behaviour”.

“Our relationship with the PRC will be the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century. We know we must engage the PRC from a position of strength,” he added.

A Taiwan Air Force F-16 fighter aircraft flies alongside a Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) H-6K bomber that reportedly flew over the Bashi Channel, south of Taiwan, and over the Miyako Strait, near Japan's Okinawa Island, in a drill. Picture: AFP.

The two-day meeting, which on Friday will include discussions on how the two geopolitical giants can co-ordinate in the Asia-Pacific, will cover economic and technology issues, human rights, disinformation, security, and “how we pursue results-oriented co-operation with the PRC where our interests align”.

The G7 meeting in the UK in June included a warning to China to respect “the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait”, a comment widely seen as the start of a shift in European nations’ more ambivalent attitude to China’s behaviour toward the more strident, outspoken view in Washington.

The White House declined to comment about whether the US-EU Dialogue on China, as it’s called, the second such meeting this year, will discuss a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics which take place in February.

Xi Jinping and Joe Biden. Picture: AFP.

President Biden has repeatedly said the US was “considering” a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, which would mean athletes, but not government officials, could attend.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, speaking at a defence conference in Halifax, Canada late last month, said a boycott would be a “very delicate issue” that needed to be “considered very carefully”.

“A boycott of an Olympics games could be very counter-productive unless it is very widespread … it would really need I think to be effective you’d need to have basically all like-minded countries taking the same decision,” he added.

In the wide ranging interview, the former president also told Mr Farage US relations with North Korea had deteriorated too. “And honestly it’s a big problem because [Kim Jong Un] does have serious nuclear power”.

Mr Trump said he would be campaigning strongly for Republican candidates that he had endorsed in the 2022 mid-term elections, which are expected see the Democrats lose control of the Congress.

Asked by Mr Farage, who acknowledged Mr Trump couldn’t declare an intention without triggering US electoral rules that places restrictions on spending, if he would run for president in 2024, Mr Trump answered “you’ll be happy in the future”.

“If you love the country, you have no choice,” he added vaguely.

The former president also slammed Boris Johnson’s expansion of wind power in the UK, declaring it was ruining Scotland and “looked disgusting”.

“Wind is the most expensive form of energy and every 10 years you have to replace those monsters [turbines], they kill all the birds, they are so bad,” he said, adding “they are starting to rust, wear out”.

He also said Prince Harry, who now lived in California after his break with the royal family, had been “used horribly” by his American wife Meghan, who in turn had been “terribly disrespectful to the Queen”.

“Some day he will regret it,” the former president said.