Trump tries to ease tensions with his Chinese counterpart

US President Donald Trump has affirmed that he "admires" his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, but admitted that a deal with him is "very difficult," amid the ongoing war of words between Washington and Beijing over key issues. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's latest assertion that the world "will never forget" the Chinese authorities' suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

"Too harsh"

Amid the ongoing back-and-forth between Washington and Beijing on numerous issues, particularly the trade war, President Trump wrote in a brief post on his social media platform, Truth Social: “I like President Xi of China, always have, and always will, but he is very tough and hard to make a deal with!”

This statement appeared to be an attempt by the US president to calm the situation before an upcoming phone call with his Chinese counterpart, despite Rubio's remarks on the 36th anniversary of the suppression of protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, where soldiers opened fire on demonstrators on June 4, 1989, killing hundreds, or more than a thousand people according to some Western estimates.

Rubio said in his statement that on that date, "tens of thousands of students gathered in Beijing's largest public square to mourn the passing of a Chinese Communist Party leader who sought to guide China toward a more open and democratic system." He added, "Their actions inspired a national movement. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens in the capital and across China took to the streets for weeks to exercise their freedom of expression and peaceful assembly by calling for democracy, human rights, and an end to rampant corruption."

He added, "The Chinese Communist Party responded with a brutal crackdown, sending in the People's Liberation Army to open fire in an attempt to quell the pro-democracy sentiment of unarmed civilians who had gathered in the streets of Beijing and Tiananmen Square."

He believed that despite the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to "obscure the facts," "the world will never forget" what happened. He commended "the courage of the Chinese people who were killed while trying to exercise their fundamental freedoms, as well as those who continue to suffer persecution as they seek accountability and justice" in those events, considering that their courage demonstrates that "the principles of freedom, democracy, and self-government are not just American, but human principles that the Chinese Communist Party cannot obliterate."

Chinese protest

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian responded on Wednesday, saying, "The US side's false statements maliciously distort historical facts, deliberately attack China's political system and development path, and seriously interfere in China's internal affairs." He expressed China's "strong dissatisfaction with this matter." He added, "We have lodged solemn representations with the US side."

Rubio's statement followed the general lines of his predecessors at the State Department, most recently Democratic Secretary Antony Blinken, who last year called on Beijing to accept the recommendations of a UN-backed human rights review and respect the freedoms enshrined in the post-World War II Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Rubio did not mention the United Nations, which has been repeatedly criticized by the Trump administration.