New York: The late Hulk Hogan was warming up the crowd for Donald Trump at the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC) – by ripping off his shirt – when China’s ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, leant over to Kevin Rudd and asked: “Kevin, what the hell was that?”
Rudd, then Australia’s ambassador to the US, and himself lightly bemused by the spectacle, replied: “We should have a chat tomorrow.”
The two men had tea the next day at the Milwaukee Club, where Rudd explained why it would not be wise for China to try to make a move on Taiwan under a Trump presidency.
“The whole Hulk Hogan phenomenon is seeking to underline, underscore, what President Trump has seen as his essential strength for office, and that is: I am a strongman,” says Rudd.
“And if you have anything in your mind which is likely to render me [Trump] to look weak, then frankly, I’m going to double down, retaliate, in order to reassert my strength.”
Rudd recounted this story on Monday night (US time) at an event in New York City with the Asia Society, the think tank he rejoined as global president and chief executive after resigning the ambassadorship last month.
They were among his first public comments since he left the role of Australia’s chief diplomat in Washington after three years to return to China scholarship.
Rudd said he told his Chinese counterpart at the RNC that if China believed it wise to use force to change the status quo in Taiwan, “the immediate consequence would be to make President Trump look weak in the world and also in the United States”.
Trump “could and would do anything in order to reassert his strength, and therefore we’re in the business of escalation, crisis conflict and potentially war”.
“To my Chinese friends, I said, ‘Do not do this’,” Rudd recounted. “President Trump, I think, understands this intuitively, which is why I’d be very surprised if the language [on Taiwan] was to change in any way.”
The remarks from Rudd, who is considered one of the world’s leading China scholars, came on the eve of Trump’s highly anticipated trip to Beijing. He leaves Washington on Tuesday (Washington time) for the first visit to China by a sitting US president since Trump went in 2017, during his first term.
Foreign policy commentators have speculated about Trump changing US policy regarding Taiwan as part of a grand bargain with Chinese President Xi Jinping on trade and other economic matters. But the administration has played down that possibility ahead of the visit.
“Not unlike discussions on Iran, Russia and all the hotspots – or potential hotspots – there is an ongoing conversation about Taiwan,” a senior US official said on a briefing call.
“The last couple of times [Trump and Xi] have interacted it has been a point of discussion. There has been no change of US policy coming out of those, and we don’t expect to see any changes in US policy going forward.”
However, Trump indicated a willingness to engage with Xi about future American arms sales to Taiwan, which China claims as its territory.
Asked on Monday (US time) whether he believed the US should keep selling weapons to Taiwan, Trump said: “Well, I’m going to have that discussion with President Xi. President Xi would like us not to, and I’ll have that discussion.”
The Trump administration in December approved the largest-ever arms sale to Taiwan, worth $US11.1 billion ($15.3 billion) – a fact that a senior US official highlighted on a briefing call with reporters.
Trump said Taiwan always came up in discussions with Xi, but he did not want to see any aggression by China akin to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We’re very far away. We’re 9500 miles, he [Xi] is 67 miles. It’s a little bit of a difference. But there’s a lot of support for Taiwan from Japan, from countries in that area,” Trump said.
Lisa Curtis, the director of the Indo-Pacific program at the Centre for a New American Security, and a National Security Council adviser to Trump in his first term, said it was more likely Trump would make concessions on arms sales to Taiwan than change long-standing US policy on Taiwanese independence.
Taiwan and the war in Iran are expected to play a significant role in this week’s meeting, though both leaders want to focus on the trade relationship between the world’s two largest economies.
Trump wants Beijing to agree to purchase more soybeans from American farmers, as well as Boeing aircraft. It follows a thawing of economic relations during a brief meeting in Busan, South Korea, last year in which Trump agreed to lower tariffs and Xi relaxed export controls on rare earths.
The White House confirmed that a delegation of 17 high-powered American business leaders, including Elon Musk, will accompany Trump on the visit.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss will be joined by outgoing Apple chief executive Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Goldman Sachs’ chairman and CEO David Solomon, and Boeing’s president and chief executive Kelly Ortberg, among others.
Two women are in the delegation: Dina Powell, the president and vice-chair of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, and Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, as well as Jane Fraser, the chief executive of Citigroup.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.