New York Times reports that President-elect Donald J. Trump, defending his recent phone call with Taiwan's president, asserted in an interview broadcast on Sunday that the United States was not bound by the One China policy, the 44-year diplomatic understanding that underpins America's relationship with its biggest rival. Mr. Trump, speaking on Fox News, said he understood the principle of a single China that includes Taiwan, but declared, "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, including trade." "I mean, look," he continued, "we're being hurt very badly by China with devaluation; with taxing us heavy at the borders when we don't tax them; with building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea, which they shouldn't be doing; and, frankly, with not helping us at all with North Korea." Mr. Trump is not the first incoming Republican president to question the One China policy, but his suggestion that it could be used as a chip to correct Chinese behavior sets him apart, several Asia experts said. While Mr. Trump has been praised by some Republicans for taking a new look at China policy, his stance could risk a backlash by Beijing, the analysts said.

Financial Times reports that China is gearing up for a new round of trade battles with the US, EU and other leading trading powers after failing to secure widespread recognition for a bid to be viewed as a "market economy" under World Trade Organisation rules. Beijing has been pushing for a provision that allows trading partners to use a special formula to calculate punitive tariffs for non-market economies in anti-dumping cases to expire with Sunday's 15th anniversary of its WTO membership. But that expiry is now in dispute. A move once viewed as automatic has become increasingly contentious after cheap Chinese steel flooded on to world markets and sparked a wave of politically sensitive anti-dumping cases. As a result, China is being forced to challenge new dumping cases brought against it in the US and other jurisdictions in a process that could take years and prove a significant irritant in Beijing's trade relations with the world.  In a sign of the commercial stakes, the US on Friday imposed punitive anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese-made washing machines, imports into the US of which were worth more than $1.1bn last year. It also announced the launch of a new anti-dumping investigation into plywood imports from China. Those US cases and the fight over Beijing's market economy status point to the battles over trade already being fought with China even as Donald Trump.

The world can only wonder whether President-elect Donald Trump will fulfill his campaign promise to impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese-made goods bought in the U.S. What's already clear, though, is that investors inside the No. 2 economy, unlike their American counterparts, are undaunted. No nation does as much business with the U.S. as China, accounting for almost 17 percent of total American trade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. As China's economic growth rate slowed from 10.6 percent in 2010 to 6.7 percent this year, money flowed out of the country. The renminbi depreciated 6 percent to an eight-year low through 11 months of 2016. That helps explain the Chinese preference for publicly-traded equity in dollars amid forecasts that the renminbi will weaken almost another 3 percent in 2017.