Radio Sputnik discussed the issue with Professor Zhang Baohui, Chinese analyst from Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
“If that scenario does happen, I think China may choose to retaliate in several policy areas such as the North Korean nuclear issue. China is one of the few countries, maybe the only country on Earth that could genuinely affect North Korea’s nuclear behavior,” Baohui said.
He further said that if the US President-elect Donald Trump gives China trouble, China may actually give North Korea a freer hand to challenge Trump.
“Mr. Kim of North Korea said that Korea may try to experiment with an inter-continental ballistic missile and that is a big problem for Trump,” the professor said.
Talking about the probability of Trump reneging on the one-China policy, Baohui told Sputnik that according to him the probability is not very high because the US-President elect said that his phone call with Taiwanese president was just a “matter of curtesy without signaling anything.”
The professor said that in his opinion Trump may face serious resistance if he deviates too much from the current policy on China.
“I think the real probability of Trump making a 100 degree turn on the US-China policy is very low.”
Baohui further spoke about Taiwan and its strategy saying that in this whole situation Taiwan is the “trouble-maker.” Beijing has retaliated to Taiwan’s policies but Beijing will not try to sway countries away from Taiwan as it has only 21 countries with which it has diplomatic relations.
“China can put a ban on Chinese travelling to Taiwan and that would affect the country a lot because Taiwan greatly depends on tourism from China, so that could do some damage to China.”
Talking about another issue that could affect bilateral relations of the two countries, Baohui said, “It could be North Korea because Trump just recently said that China is not doing enough to pressure North Korea to stop the nuclear program. So that could result in some tension between China and the US because China doesn’t want to impose additional sanctions on North Korea.”
On Sunday, the Taiwanese president met senior Republican lawmakers in Houston. President Tsai Ing-wen made a stopover en route to Central America. This took place in spite of Beijing’s request not to allow her to enter the US.
Tsai's office has stayed low key about her US meetings, saying only that she talked with “friends” during her private and unofficial stopover.
However, in a separate statement US senator from Texas Ted Cruz said he and Tsai discussed upgrading bilateral relations and promoting economic cooperation between their countries. China is deeply suspicious of Tsai, who it thinks wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan.
The self-governing island is regarded by Beijing as a renegade province, ineligible for state-to-state relations.
