A former US national security adviser, who met Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen last month, has defended Donald Trump’s controversial comments on cross-strait relations and described the one China policy as “an anomaly” for over four decades. Stephen Yates, a former deputy national security adviser to ex-US vice-president Dick Cheney, said it was right that the US should not accept restrictions on contact with Taiwan imposed by China and that American policy towards the island needed a “recalibration”, the South China Morning Post reports. Trump has made remarks indicating that the US should not be bound by the one-China policy, which stipulates that Taiwan is part of China. The comments were widely seen as a departure from the decades-long American diplomatic policy on cross-strait relations.