US President Donald Trump plans to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in May during his first visit to China in eight years, a closely watched trip postponed due to the Iran war.
Trump’s effort to reschedule the trip reflected the Republican president’s eagerness to project confidence in a challenging Middle East war and simultaneously to manage a tense relationship between the world’s biggest economies.
Initially slated to travel next week, Trump would now visit Beijing on May 14 and 15, he wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday, adding that he would host Xi for a reciprocal visit in Washington later this year.
Photo: Reuters
“Our Representatives are finalizing preparations for these Historic Visits,” Trump said. “I look very much forward to spending time with President Xi in what will be, I am sure, a Monumental Event.”
China’s embassy said it had no information to provide on the announcement of the visit. Beijing normally does not detail Xi’s schedule more than a few days in advance.
The long-scheduled trip — and Washington’s broader effort to reset relations in the Asia Pacific region — have been repeatedly overtaken by events.
The US Supreme Court last month curtailed the US president’s power to impose tariffs, a source of leverage for Trump in negotiations with the US’ third-biggest trading partner. Later that month, Trump’s joint military operation with Israel against Iran introduced a new point of tension with Beijing, Tehran’s main oil buyer.
Trump’s last trip to China, in 2017, was the most recent by a US president. Trump’s visit in May would be the leaders’ first in-person talks since a meeting in South Korea in October last year, when they agreed on a trade truce.
The two-day trip is set to combine the lavish pomp and circumstance that has become a feature of Trump’s trips abroad with hard-nosed diplomacy.
While the two sides could strike goodwill agreements in Beijing on trade in agriculture and airplane parts, they are also expected to discuss areas of deep tension such as Taiwan, where little progress is expected.
Trump has dramatically ramped up US arms sales to Taiwan during his second term in office, and Reuters has reported that a further package is expected after his visit, moves which have angered Beijing.
Chinese Ministry of National Defense spokesman Jiang Bin (蔣斌) yesterday urged Washington to handle the Taiwan issue with “extreme caution.”
“The United States should fully recognize the high sensitivity and serious harmfulness of the issue of arms sales to Taiwan,” Jiang told a regular news briefing in Beijing.
It is also not clear whether the war with Iran, which has shaken the global economy, would be settled by the time of the Xi-Trump meeting.
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