Donald Trump has received a spectacular state welcome from China's president Xi Jinping, treated to imperial pomp rarely afforded a US president as goose-stepping honor guards greeted him in Beijing.
The President shook hands warmly with Xi, patting him on the back of the hand as they chatted briefly on the steps to the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square. Trump was joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as his son Eric and daughter-in-law Lara, and tech bosses Elon Musk and Jensen Huang.
It is Trump's first meeting with Xi since the Iran war erupted on February 28. Following Trump's arrival at the Great Hall of the People, adjacent to Tiananmen Square, the two Presidents will buckle down for a roughly two hour bilateral meeting.
The President is expected to press Xi to lean on Tehran to accept a ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while Xi is widely expected to push for tariff relief and access to American-designed AI chips. The summit was originally slated for March but was postponed when the war broke out.
Reports indicate that Xi has a very limited command over the English language, and Trump does not know mandarin, so their back-and-forth was more for show than substance. Leading the two largest economies globally, Trump and Xi have a lot to hammer out in their two days together.
On Wednesday, Trump called on Xi to 'open up' his economy further to US businesses; a large cohort of 17 US CEOs were invited to the White House to act as economic negotiators to iron out roadblocks preventing further investment. The President arrived late Wednesday evening local time in the Chinese capital before heading to his hotel for rest. Trump was greeted on the tarmac by a military band, roughly 300 students waving US and Chinese flags and the nation's Vice President Han Zheng.
