US President has contradicted a senior diplomat's remarks, saying his country reserves the option to disengage from China • Both powers have been exchanging threats for several months
US President Donald Trump // Photo: Reuters
US President Donald Trump threatened to cut off relations with China tonight (Thursday), after yesterday's US Commerce Representative Robert Lightheiser said he did not see a real way to separate the powers.
"It is not Ambassador Laitheiser's fault (who spoke to the committee yesterday) in that I may not have made myself very clear, but the United States is beginning to have the option of a policy, under different conditions, of severing relations if China," the president tweeted on Twitter.
The two powers have been exchanging threats for a few months due to Beijing's overbearing policies in Hong Kong as well as China's conduct during the outbreak of corona disease. Trump himself has much in recent months attacked China's leadership verbally, claiming that US intelligence is investigating the possibility that Chinese negligence has spread the corona virus.
Yesterday, the relationship between the states hit a new low when President Trump signed a series of sanctions against the Chinese government because of Beijing's attitude toward the Uighur minority and the oppression suffered by the minority.
Trump has been criticized at home for the move, after he allegedly declared the crackdown only because of the publication of his former national security adviser, John Bolton, where Trump allegedly led Chinese President Xi Jinping to set up "re-education" camps for the Muslim population in the country.