{"id":668327,"date":"2026-05-13T14:02:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/668327\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T14:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:02:16","slug":"trump-xi-meeting-the-two-leaders-get-ready-to-lock-horns-on-iran-trade-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/668327\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump-Xi meeting: The two leaders get ready to lock horns on Iran, trade and AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Beijing: US President Donald Trump has landed in Beijing for his highly anticipated summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, with the Iran war, trade and artificial intelligence the key talking points of their high-stakes meeting.<\/p>\n

The president was greeted by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng; Xie Feng, China\u2019s ambassador to Washington; Ma Zhaoxu, executive vice minister of foreign affairs; as well as the US envoy to Beijing, David Perdue, according to the White House.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The welcoming ceremony included some 300 Chinese youths, a military honour guard and a military band.<\/p>\n

The US president has no public events beyond his arrival on Wednesday\u2019s schedule, but is set to meet with Xi a series of times on Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n

\" President<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump is greeted by China\u2019s Vice President Han Zheng as he arrives on Air Force One at Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing. AP\"PresidentPresident Donald Trump walks to his motorcade as he is greeted by Chinese officials at Beijing Capital International Airport. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s state visit to China \u2013 the first by a US president in almost a decade \u2013 comes saddled with the baggage of the Iran war, which has triggered a global energy crisis, and injected fresh tensions into the talks due to Beijing\u2019s close diplomatic ties with Tehran as the largest buyer of its oil.<\/p>\n

Both Trump and Xi are seeking to stabilise their fragile trade truce, secured in South Korea in October, across two days of talks at the Great Hall, an evening banquet, and visits to the Temple of Heaven and Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound.<\/p>\n

Many analysts regard the Middle East conflict as having shifted leverage further in China\u2019s favour since the two leaders last met on the sidelines of the APEC summit last year.<\/p>\n

\"PresidentPresident Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One on his way to China to meet President Xi Jinping.AP<\/p>\n

As he departed Washington for Beijing on Tuesday (US time), Trump downplayed the prospect of the war hanging over the summit talks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we need any help with Iran. We\u2019ll win it one way or the other, peacefully or otherwise,\u201d he told reporters before boarding Air Force One.<\/p>\n

Trump is expected to seek \u201cwins\u201d on trade by locking in Chinese purchases of American food and aircraft, saying he\u2019ll be talking to Xi about trade \u201cmore than anything else\u201d.<\/p>\n

Other US officials have indicated the Iran war will be a key agenda item, including US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who this month urged China to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

The war, launched by the US and Israel in February, has drained US military stockpiles, worsened cost-of-living pressures for Americans ahead of crucial midterm elections in November, and eroded US standing on the international stage.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"China<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chinese are acutely aware that this is a major concern for the Americans, and as a result, it\u2019s a substantial source of leverage for Beijing,\u201d said Evan Medeiros, from the Asia Group, and a former China adviser on the Obama administration\u2019s National Security Council.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is: is Trump willing to pay whatever price Beijing puts on their Chinese co-operation on the Iran issue?\u201d<\/p>\n

Xi is widely expected to use the talks to emphasise China\u2019s claims to Taiwan, and to seek to convince Trump to roll back US weapons sales to the democratic island or harden the US\u2019s official stance towards Taiwan independence from \u201cdoes not support\u201d to \u201copposes\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s visit comes days after Taiwan\u2019s opposition-controlled parliament approved only two-thirds of a $US40 billion special defence budget to buy orders of US weapons authorised by Washington last year.<\/p>\n

Trump has delayed signing off on another $US14 billion arms package for months, triggering speculation among analysts that it could be used as a negotiating chip.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Chinese state media and officials were prefacing the US president\u2019s arrival with strong statements about Taiwan as the most high risk \u201cred line\u201d in US-China relations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe firmly oppose the United States engaging in any form of military ties with China\u2019s Taiwan region, and firmly oppose the United States selling weapons to China\u2019s Taiwan region,\u201d Zhang Han, a spokesperson for China\u2019s Taiwan Affairs Office, said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople ride a public bus past Tiananmen Gate in Beijing. Trump\u2019s last visit to China was in 2017. Getty Images\"CommutersCommuters wait at a traffic light next to a police officer near Tiananmen Square, as the city gets ready to welcome the US president.Getty Images<\/p>\n

Accompanying Trump is a bevy of America\u2019s top chief executives, including Apple\u2019s Tim Cook, Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk and chipmaker Nvidia\u2019s boss Jensen Huang, who was a last-minute addition to the travelling party.<\/p>\n

\"NvidiaNvidia CEO Jensen Huang is part of a contingent of business leaders joining Trump on his visit to China.AP<\/p>\n

He is also accompanied by family members Eric and Lara Trump and cabinet officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio. One notable name absent from the travel party is first lady Melania Trump, who is not accompanying the US president.<\/p>\n

Her absence, first reported by the South China Morning Post, would suggest the serious nature of the visit, with pageantry giving way to hard-nosed negotiations.<\/p>\n

\"FirstFirst lady Melania Trump is not joining the US president on the trip.AP<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is hoping to begin the process of establishing a \u201cBoard of Trade\u201d with China to address differences between the countries. The board could help prevent the trade war ignited last year after Trump\u2019s tariff rises, an action China countered through its control of rare earth minerals. That led to a one-year truce last October.<\/p>\n

Despite Trump\u2019s outward confidence, China appears to be entering the meeting from \u201ca much stronger place\u201d, said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser on Chinese business and economics at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.<\/p>\n

China would like to reduce tech restrictions on accessing computer chips and find ways to reduce tariffs, among other goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut even if they don\u2019t get much on any of those things, as long as there\u2019s not a blow-up in the meeting and President Trump doesn\u2019t go away and look to re-escalate, China basically comes out stronger,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

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\"LisaLisa Visentin<\/a> is the North Asia correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Beijing. She was previously a federal political correspondent based in Canberra.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-668327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}