Donald Trump is due to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday evening, the first visit to China by a US president in nearly a decade, as he seeks to mend power and prestige weakened by the war in Iran.<\/p>\n
Trump\u00a0will bring tech leaders, including Elon Musk<\/a>\u00a0of Tesla and Tim Cook of Apple, and plans for headline-grabbing deals. He has said he expects China\u2019s leader, Xi Jinping, would \u201cgive me a big, fat hug when I get there\u201d.<\/p>\n But the Middle East conflict that Trump started, and seems unable to finish, will cast a long shadow over two days of talks<\/a> amid fears that he might be tempted to weaken US support for Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by China, in return for Xi\u2019s assistance.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we need any help with Iran,\u201d Trump said to reporters before departing the White House on Tuesday. \u201cWe\u2019ll win it one way or the other \u2013 peacefully or otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n He also sought to play down divisions with Beijing, saying Xi had been \u201crelatively good\u201d during the crisis and insisting that Washington had \u201cIran very much under control\u201d.<\/p>\n Workers prepare the Temple of Heaven for Trump\u2019s visit. Photograph: Kevin Frayer\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The war has entered its third month, with Tehran tightening its grip over the strait of Hormuz and Washington struggling to turn a fragile ceasefire<\/a> into a lasting settlement.<\/p>\n Behind the scenes, US officials have spent weeks urging China<\/a> \u2013 Iran\u2019s biggest oil customer and one of the few powers with leverage in Tehran \u2013 to pressure the Islamic Republic into reopening the strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world\u2019s oil supply ordinarily passes, while accepting US terms for peace.<\/p>\n The US recently sanctioned several Chinese firms accused of assisting Iranian oil shipments and supplying satellite imagery allegedly used in Iranian military operations. China condemned the measures as \u201cillegal unilateral sanctions\u201d and invoked a rarely used blocking statute prohibiting Chinese entities from complying with them.<\/p>\n Chinese officials have publicly called for stability while carefully avoiding overt alignment with Washington. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi last week hosted his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, in Beijing, and defended Iran\u2019s right to develop civilian nuclear energy.<\/p>\n Xi has also offered implicit criticism of the US over the war<\/a>. He has said safeguarding international rule of law is paramount, adding it \u201cmust not be selectively applied or disregarded,\u201d nor should the world be allowed to revert \u201cto the law of the jungle\u201d.<\/p>\n Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in Beijing on 6 May 2026. Photograph: Iranian Foreign Ministry\/UPI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Still, neither side appears eager to allow the Iran crisis to derail broader diplomatic and economic engagement in the first of four potential meetings between Trump and Xi over the next year.<\/p>\n The two countries remain locked in a fragile tariff truce<\/a> reached last autumn after tensions threatened to erupt into a full-scale trade war. Trump has long complained about China\u2019s trade surplus with the US, while Beijing has bristled at American export controls and sanctions.<\/p>\n White House officials said Trump would travel with a delegation of more than a dozen US business leaders, including Musk and Cook, in a sign that both governments still seek economic cooperation despite strategic rivalry.<\/p>\n A sale of 500 Boeing 737 Max jets, one of the biggest orders in its history, will be announced during the trip, the Bloomberg news agency reported<\/a>. Trump and Xi will also discuss creating a new board of trade to manage what China should buy from the US and vice versa.<\/p>\n Beijing, too, has reasons to avoid escalation. China\u2019s economy remains burdened by sluggish domestic demand and a prolonged property crisis, while the closure of the strait of Hormuz has exposed its heavy dependence on Middle Eastern energy supplies.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s trip will be closely scrutinised in Taiwan for any sign of weakening US support. On Monday, he said he would speak to Xi about US arms sales to Taiwan, a departure from historic US insistence that it will not consult Beijing on its support to the island.<\/p>\n Xi Jinping and Donald Trump inspect an honour guard at a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in November 2017. Photograph: Andy Wong\/AP<\/p>\n He also insisted that his personal relationship with Xi would prevent a Chinese invasion of the island. \u201cI think we\u2019ll be fine,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a very good relationship with President Xi. He knows I don\u2019t want that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Another potential focus will be AI, with both countries facing calls to cooperate on global standards and safeguards. Bernie Sanders, an independent US senator, urged Trump and Xi to agree on allowing top scientists to share technical information and develop \u201cAI redlines\u201d about dangerous behaviour.<\/p>\n Sanders said: \u201cAt the height of the cold war, Reagan and Gorbachev found a way to negotiate nuclear arms control. The existential risk posed by AI demands nothing less from Trump and Xi.\u201d<\/p>\n In Beijing, security was visibly tightened ahead of the visit, with police stationed at major intersections and checks increased on the metro system.<\/p>\n The summit itinerary includes a formal welcome ceremony, private meetings between the two leaders and a tour of the Temple of Heaven \u2013 a religious complex dating to the 15th century symbolising the relationship between Earth and heaven. Trump will attend a state banquet on Thursday evening and then have a tea and working lunch with Xi on Friday before leaving.<\/p>\n A vessel waiting to cross the strait of Hormuz on Tuesday. Photograph: Ismael Mohamad\/UPI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n The US president, who has been criticised for emphasising foreign policy at the expense of domestic concerns in his second term, will be eager to project strength and present the trip as a victory.<\/p>\n Anna Kelly, the White House principal deputy press secretary, told reporters on a call on Sunday: \u201cPresident Trump cares about results, not symbols. But even still, the president has a great relationship with President Xi, and the upcoming summit in Beijing will be both symbolically and substantively significant.\u201d<\/p>\n But the US approach is likely to be pragmatic and transactional with little focus on structural reform. Scott Kennedy, senior adviser in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank in Washington, said<\/a>: \u201cChina and Xi Jinping come into this meeting in a much stronger place than the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cChina has goals that they would like: to extend the ceasefire, to reduce tech restrictions on the imports of semiconductors and lower tariffs. But 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump is due to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday evening, the first visit to China by a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-439076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}