BEIJING: China and the United States should prepare for “important high-level exchanges”, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday, while warning the Taiwan issue is “the biggest point of risk” for relations.

“The Taiwan issue concerns China’s core interests,” Wang Yi told Rubio, adding that the US should “keep its promises and make the right choices in order to open up new space for China-US cooperation and make due efforts for world peace”, an official summary of the call released by Wang’s ministry showed.

The phone conversation came weeks before an expected mid-May summit between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping in Beijing, and it underscored Taiwan’s place at the top of Beijing’s agenda.

Wang and Rubio last met in-person in Munich in February, as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies eased.

A fragile tariff truce was struck during a Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea in October.

Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2026