United States President Donald Trump has welcomed his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to Washington, DC, for a three-day visit and high-stakes talks on trade, Taiwan and artificial intelligence.
Xi’s landed at Joint Base Andrews, outside the US capital, on Wednesday as the Trump administration announced that the two countries have agreed to extend an 11-month trade deal that offered temporary relief from punishing tariffs.
Trump took the rare step of personally meeting Xi on his arrival, marking the first time in 11 years that a US president has greeted a foreign leader at the base, according to US media.
At the arrival ceremony, the leaders and their wives shook hands, spoke for a few minutes and stood for pictures as a military band played, cannons blasted and a B-1 military bomber flew overhead.
In a written statement afterwards, Xi said China and the US should be partners and not rivals, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. “He said that the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand, complement each other and benefit the world,” Xinhua reported.
Trump’s in-person greeting signals the significance that Washington ascribes to its relationship with Beijing, whose meteoric economic rise over the last several decades has transformed it into a global superpower capable of rivalling the US.
Xi’s visit comes after he hosted Trump in Beijing in May.
His schedule in Washington, DC, will include a state dinner attended by leaders of the US’s powerful tech industry, a military ceremony at the White House and a visit to the National Archives, home to documents of historical and cultural significance such as the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
His talks with Trump are likely to cover the US-Israel war on Iran, the US-China trade deal, AI, and US ties to Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as part of its territory, according to analysts.
