'Outraged': China urges US to back out of Taiwan deal

Donald Trump was critical of China during his successful 2016 presidential campaign but his meeting at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida with President Xi raised hopes for warmer relations. Photo / AP

China has urged the US to revoke immediately its "wrong decision" to sell Taiwan $US1.42 billion worth of arms, saying it contradicted a "consensus" President Xi Jinping reached with his counterpart, Donald Trump, in talks in April in Florida.

The sale would send a very wrong message to "Taiwan independence" forces, China's embassy in Washington said in a statement after a US State Department spokeswoman said the administration had told Congress of seven proposed sales to Taiwan, the first under the Trump administration.

"The Chinese government and Chinese people have every right to be outraged," the embassy said.

China regards self-ruled Taiwan as a renegade province and has never renounced the use of force to bring it back under its control.

China's Nationalists fled to the island after losing a civil war with China's Communists in 1949.

The US is the sole arms supplier to Taiwan.

"The wrong move of the US side runs counter to the consensus reached by the two presidents in and the positive development momentum of the China-US relationship," the embassy said.

Trump was critical of China during his successful 2016 presidential campaign but his meeting at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida with Xi raised hopes for warmer relations.

Trump later played up his personal relationship with Xi, calling him a "good man", and stressed the need for China's help in reining in a defiant North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and missiles.

China's anger over the US plan to supply Taiwan with weapons risks undermining Trump's attempts to press China to help on North Korea.

- AAP