US President Donald Trump has taken a lot of heat for stating in a "lengthy" and "extremely cordial" phone talk with President Xi Jinping last week that he would honor the one-China policy. He was mocked and criticized for "backing away from a fight" and "blinking first".

His critics seem anxious to stir up trouble between the world's two largest economies.

What Trump did is simply correcting a mistake he made in the past few months, when he spoke on the phone with Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen in early December, when he told Fox News a few days later that "I don't know why we have to be bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things" and when he told the Wall Street Journal in January that "everything is under negotiation, including 'One China'".