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.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS