Trump to raise Taiwan arms sales, Jimmy Lai's imprisonment with Xi Jinping at Beijing summit

President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that US arms sales to Taiwan and the continued imprisonment of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai will feature on his agenda when he meets Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing later this week, placing two of the most sensitive flashpoints in US-China relations at the heart of a summit already laden with expectations.

When asked about Washington's longstanding support for Taiwan's defence, Trump said: "I'm going to have that discussion with President Xi. President Xi would like us not to, and I'll have that discussion. That's one of the many things I'll be talking about."

The remarks come after Beijing reportedly pressed the Trump administration to scale back its security commitments to the island. The administration has not moved ahead with arms deliveries following a record 11 billion dollar weapons package for Taiwan authorised in December, ahead of the presidential summit.

Last Friday, Taiwan's lawmakers approved a special defence budget of 25 billion dollars to purchase missiles and other weapons from the US, falling well short of the 40 billion dollars the government had sought to counter an increasingly assertive Chinese military posture.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun had previously warned in December: "By aiding Taiwan's independence through arms sales, the US will only end up harming itself. Any attempt to use Taiwan to contain China is doomed to fail."

Security analysts have raised concerns about what even an ambiguous shift in tone from Trump could signal. Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific programme at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said any rhetorical softening would be "the most destabilizing outcome" of the summit.

"A tacit or explicit bargain in which Washington appears to concede a sphere of influence to Beijing over Taiwan" in exchange for concessions elsewhere could embolden China to take more assertive steps to erode Taiwan's autonomy, Glaser said.

"Jimmy Lai, he caused lots of turmoil for China. He tried to do the right thing. He wasn't successful, went to jail, and people would like him out, and I'd like to see him out too," Trump said on Monday.

In February, a Hong Kong court sentenced Lai to 20 years in prison on charges of colluding with foreign forces, the longest sentence handed down under the national security law introduced in 2020. The sentence surpassed the 10-year term given to activist Benny Tai, a former law professor convicted of conspiring to subvert state power in November 2024. Lai has been in detention for more than five years and is also serving a separate prison term on fraud charges. He was convicted in December for collusion with foreign forces, endangering national security and conspiracy to publish seditious materials.

Trump had previously called for Lai's release during a meeting with Xi on the sidelines of the APEC summit in October last year.

The position reflects a broader pattern in which China has consistently framed international criticism of Hong Kong's post-2020 legal landscape as illegitimate external meddling, complicating any diplomatic effort to secure Lai's freedom through bilateral channels.