President Donald Trump arrives in Beijing on Wednesday evening for his first state visit to China since the Iran war and his return to the White House, with the conflict in the Middle East and unresolved trade battles threatening to overshadow the ceremonial welcome he has predicted. Trump had written on social media that Xi Jinping would “give me a big, fat hug when I get there,” but the deep economic ties between Beijing and Tehran, and the tariffs still simmering from his first term, have injected uncertainty into a relationship the American president has long described in personal terms.
The visit is laden with symbolic weight. Trump will take part in a welcome ceremony on Thursday morning and meet one-on-one with Xi before the two leaders tour the Temple of Heaven, the 15th-century religious complex that the Chinese government presents as a symbol of harmony between earth and heaven. A state banquet follows Thursday evening, and a working lunch on Friday will close the visit. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Sunday the leaders will discuss creating a new Board of Trade to keep dialogue open on economic issues, along with cooperation in energy, aerospace and agriculture.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun signaled Beijing’s willingness to engage, saying Monday that the country is “willing to work with the U.S., based on equality and mutual respect to expand cooperation, manage differences, and add stability to a turbulent world.” He added that the diplomacy between the two leaders “plays an irreplaceable strategic guiding role” in the bilateral relationship.
Still, analysts expect the pageantry to carry less diplomatic momentum than Trump’s first state visit in 2017, which Beijing billed as a “state visit-plus.” That trip included a private dinner at the Forbidden City — Trump was the first foreign leader since the founding of the People’s Republic to experience what had once been reserved for emperors — and a military parade at the Great Hall of the People.
“Even before this whole conflagration with Iran, they weren’t going to go state visit-plus like last time, just because things are tense,” said Jonathan Czin, a former director for China at the National Security Council during the Biden administration and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Czin said expectations for major breakthroughs on trade or other issues are low because the Chinese side appears to be “working backward from our midterm elections,” calculating that the closer they get to Election Day “the more leverage they are going to have.”
Ali Wyne, senior U.S.-China research and advocacy adviser for the Crisis Group, said the Chinese delegation would “do its utmost to ensure that Trump leaves Beijing believing that he has just concluded the most extraordinary state visit of his two presidencies.” But he noted that “the pomp and circumstance would serve a different role now than they did when he first visited Beijing” because “Xi has a much better understanding of Trump, and the administration’s own national security strategy and national defense strategy recognize China as a near-peer.”
The Iran war has further complicated the agenda. Beijing is the largest purchaser of Iranian oil and used that leverage to encourage Tehran to agree to a fragile ceasefire, but the White House has said Trump will press China on its ties to Iran. If China can help broker a lasting peace, it may strengthen its hand in parallel trade negotiations. Kelly said Trump “doesn’t travel anywhere without bringing deliverables home to our country,” but the path to an extended trade truce remains cluttered. The $250 billion in nonbinding trade deals announced during Trump’s 2017 trip mostly never materialized, and a round of $200 billion in deals from 2020 went largely unfulfilled. More recently, China cut off purchases of U.S. soybeans and restricted exports of rare earth minerals after Trump’s announcement of steep global tariffs last year. Those tensions have eased only somewhat under a trade truce reached last fall that both sides support extending.
The visit is the start of what could be an unusual four-meeting diplomatic blitz over eight months. After Beijing, Trump plans to host Xi at the White House, may attend the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Shenzhen, and Xi could come to the Group of 20 summit at Trump’s Doral resort in December. Czin cautioned that Xi — who also dislikes travel and does not build the kind of personal rapport Trump thrives on — might not make every planned encounter, especially after a military purge in January that saw Xi replace officials with long-standing family ties.
Wyne, however, said Xi “appreciates that he is unlikely to deal with another U.S. president who admires him as greatly and embraces as narrow a view of strategic competition,” and may therefore “attempt to pocket as many economic and security concessions from Trump as possible.” That dynamic, rather than the handshake at the Temple of Heaven, will likely determine what the visit actually delivers.