Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in a telephone call that cooperation was the only choice for relations between the two countries, Chinese state media said, in their first interaction since the U.S. election.
Trump had lambasted China throughout the U.S. election campaign, drumming up headlines with his pledges to slap 45 percent tariffs on imported Chinese goods and to label the country a currency manipulator on his first day in office.
His election has injected uncertainty into bilateral relations at a time when Beijing hopes for stability as it faces daunting reform challenges at home, a slowing economy, and a leadership reshuffle of its own that will put a new party elite around Xi in late 2017.