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Xi and Putin hold talks just days after US President Donald Trump made an official visit to China.

A meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin has started in Beijing, Chinese state media report.

Xi welcomed Putin to the Chinese capital on Wednesday, shaking hands with the Russian leader outside the Great Hall of the People before their talks, video by Russian media showed.

Before entering the Great Hall, Putin and Xi walked down a red carpet, rolled out to greet the Russian leader, and stood as a military band played their two national anthems.

Putin began the talks by hailing the “strong, positive” momentum in cooperation between Russia and China, according to Russian media.

“Even amid unfavourable external factors, our cooperation and economic cooperation is showing strong, positive momentum,” Putin told Xi.

Addressing Putin, Xi lauded the “unyielding relationship” between China and Russia.

“We have been able to continuously deepen our political mutual trust and strategic coordination with a resilience that remains unyielding despite trials and tribulations,” Xi told Putin, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.

The Chinese leader also addressed war in the Middle East, telling his Russian counterpart that further conflict was “inadvisable” and a ceasefire was necessary.

“A comprehensive ceasefire is of utmost urgency, resuming hostilities is even more inadvisable and maintaining negotiations is particularly important,” Xi said, according to Xinhua.

Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu, reporting from Beijing, noted that Putin’s visit and that of the recently concluded trip by US President Donald Trump to China were very different.

Putin, she said, is marking 25 years of the Sino-Russian friendship, has visited China dozens of times, and met with Xi on more than 40 other occasions.

“So this visit will really be about deepening existing coordination and cooperation,” Yu said.

“We are expecting that the two sides will update each other on the situation in the Middle East, as well as Ukraine. No doubt, Xi Jinping will also talk to Putin about what was discussed with Donald Trump last week,” Yu said.

Putin is being accompanied by a large delegation of Russian businesspeople and government leaders, and the Kremlin has announced that the two leaders will sign some 40 different agreements, Yu said, covering everything from the economy and tourism to education.

“But I think for Putin, the main topic of discussion with Xi Jinping is going to be on energy security,” Yu said.

“Since the war in Ukraine, any gas sales that were previously heading to Europe – that is all dried up – and Russia is in desperate need of revenue to replace that, especially since we are in the fifth year of the Ukraine war,” she added.

In a video address released before meeting Xi, Putin said Beijing and Moscow are prepared to cooperate with each other on “core interests ‌of ⁠the two countries, including the protection of sovereignty and national unity”, the Reuters news agency reports.

Both countries are actively expanding ⁠ties in economy, politics and defence, Putin said, adding that “a close” and “strategic” connection between Moscow and Beijing ⁠was playing “a stabilising role” in global relations.

“We are not aligning against anyone, but working ⁠for the cause of peace and universal prosperity,” Putin said.

HONG KONG — As President Trump left Beijing on Friday, Chinese social media resurfaced a familiar nickname for the president — flattering at first glance — declaring that Chuan Jianguo, the “Nation Builder,” had returned.

It was not meant as a compliment. The nation he is building, according to the Chinese, is not the United States but their own, through a series of inadvertent yet costly mistakes inflicted by Trump at home and abroad.

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If the Chinese government was self-assured entering Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping, then the results of the state visit, in which Beijing refused to offer Trump any meaningful deals or concessions, signal their unmistakable confidence in American decline.

Chinese government statements in local media stating as much made their way back to Trump as he was departing, aggravating the president, a U.S. official said. But the White House secured a clarification from the Chinese that seemed to placate Trump. America was only declining under President Biden, they said — not anymore.

President Trump and President Xi Jinping tour Zhongnanhai Garden on Friday in Beijing.

(Evan Vucci / Pool via Getty Images)

The Trump administration argues the trip was a success, having secured the display of conciliation and partnership the president had sought after years of increasingly dangerous acrimony.

Foreign policy hawks on China will be displeased with his new direction of friendship and cooperation with a government they view as openly hostile to the United States. But Trump seems to have reached a similar conclusion as past administrations, that China might require a relationship in pursuit of, as Xi put it, “constructive strategic stability.”

Trump was notably out of character throughout his stay here, deferential to his host, marveling at displays of Chinese power and reticent to speak with the press.

Five times over two days, Trump referred to Xi as his friend, taking every public opportunity to offer his compliments and pats on the back. None of it was reciprocated. The Chinese leader, Trump told Fox News in an interview, was “all business” in private, as well, apparently uninterested in his overtures of personal goodwill.

Presidents Xi and Trump tour Zhongnanhai Garden on Friday.

(Evan Vucci—Pool/Getty Images)

The summit may ultimately be remembered as the moment when Trump recognized a shifting power dynamic, where an American president had the rare and uncomfortable experience of entering a meeting clearly overmatched.

“I think the most important thing is relationship,” Trump said in the interview, describing the summit as “historic.”

“It’s all about relationship,” he added. “I have a very good relationship with President Xi.”

Taiwan was discussed ‘the whole night’

Little of substance was accomplished over two days of talks. But Chinese officials expected no less after warning Trump’s team before the summit that its minimal preparation had failed to lay the groundwork for diplomatic agreements.

Still, the lack of breakthroughs may come as a relief to some in Washington. Trump appears to have held to a long-standing U.S. line on Taiwan, for now, refusing to provide Xi with clarity on whether the United States would defend the self-ruled island if China tries to reclaim it by force.

The two men discussed the matter “the whole night,” Trump told Fox.

If China attacked, “they would be met harshly, and bad things will happen,” Trump said. Yet within the same answer, he questioned Taiwan’s “odds” against China if war were to break out, even with U.S. help, noting its proximity to the Chinese mainland and its vast distance away from the United States.

Whether Trump will proceed with arms sales to Taiwan — passed by Congress and obligated by law under the Taiwan Relations Act — is still an open question.

“If you kept it the way it is, I think China is going to be OK with that,” Trump said, referencing an ambiguous status quo around Taiwan’s status, “but we’re not looking to have somebody say, ‘Let’s go independent because the United States is backing us.’ ”

“Taiwan would be very smart to cool it a little bit,” he added. “China would be smart to cool it a little bit. They ought to both cool it.”

President Trump departs as President Xi looks on after a visit to Zhongnanhai Garden on Friday.

(Evan Vucci/ Pool via Getty Images)

Curious company

Trump’s choice of company in the U.S. delegation left the Chinese with questions over the purpose of the trip.

Lara Trump, a Fox News host and the president’s daughter-in-law, attended alongside her husband, Eric Trump, whose presence as a private citizen running the Trump Organization was a direct appeal to Beijing to treat the administration like a family business. Brett Ratner, director of the “Rush Hour” series and a documentary on the first lady that bombed at the box office, was given prime placement along with America’s top business leaders.

The last time a secretary of Defense attended a presidential state visit to China was on Richard Nixon’s famous trip in 1972. Chinese officials were unsure what to make of Pete Hegseth’s presence — whether it was meant to convey a softer stance, a hardening one, or simply an ignorance of basic diplomatic protocol.

Trump said he felt personally honored by the lavish welcome he received on the edge of Tiananmen Square, outside the Great Hall of the People, where China hosts all visiting dignitaries.

Before a lunch at Zhongnanhai, the secretive headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party, Trump asked Xi if he was special for getting to visit the compound. He was the fourth U.S. president to do so.

While the Trump administration offered itself glowing reviews of the outcome of the summit, the Chinese government offered little to say as he departed. And Chinese media highlighted Beijing’s resolute stance on American priorities — from trade to the Iran war — as evidence of Chinese confidence and American decline.

But all that business wasn’t the point of the trip, Trump told Fox’s Bret Baier. For the president, it was all personal.

“I want to thank President Xi, my friend, for this magnificent welcome,” Trump said in his toast at the state banquet, repeating the personal overture. “The American and Chinese people share much in common. We value hard work. We value courage and achievement. We love our families and we love our countries.

“Together, we have the chance to draw on these values to create a future of greater prosperity, cooperation and happiness and peace for our children,” Trump added. “We love our children. This region and the world — it’s a special world, with the two of us united and together.”

An especially large motorcade ferried President Donald Trump around Beijing during his trip to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week. However, a pair of heavily-laden Chinese SUVs with huge custom roofs, a configuration that does not appear to have been previously seen, were of particular interest. The motorcade also featured several other vehicles with interesting, but far less substantial additions to their roofs.

The unusual SUVs were first spotted as Trump’s motorcade moved through the Chinese capital on May 13, as can be seen in the video in the social media post immediately below. They continued to be a feature of the motorcade throughout the U.S. President’s state visit, which wrapped up today.

The U.S. Secret Service has confirmed to TWZ that it was not the operator of any of the vehicles discussed in this piece, but it could not say whether they belonged to the U.S. Embassy or the Chinese government. The Secret Service and other U.S. authorities bring large numbers of vehicles and other assets to support any presidential visit overseas, especially very high-profile ones like Trump’s trip to meet with Xi this week. State Department and other U.S. government resources already in the destination country — or region — are leveraged, as well. Local security forces also help protect American presidents during these occasions.

The two high-top SUVs that were seen in the motorcade are based on one of the current generation models available from Chinese manufacturer Hongqi.

There were two other SUVs with notable modifications to their roofs – a Chevy Suburban and a Lincoln Navigator. There was also a Ford E-series van with a prominently modified roof.

All of the American-designed vehicles in question are available in China, and they were all seen with Chinese license plates. However, the Suburban had a black plate with white lettering, a type issued for foreign-owned vehicles, which might point to it belonging to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. At the same time, China has issued specific diplomatic plates over the years that are black and white, but also include red kanji, which was not seen in this case. A general example of this is seen in the social media post below. We will come back to this later on.

The licence plate “132 021” appears to be a Chinese diplomatic one. The first character in red may be 使 which represents the Embassy. “132” refers to the Mission, which could actually be Czech — though this needs corroboration with other open sources. https://t.co/Y2kvTTD4Wx pic.twitter.com/VQnI1jVMQa

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) May 2, 2019

Regardless of their operators, the modified Hongqi SUVs were clear standouts that quickly caught attention online.

Trump had his entire motorcade flown in on C-17s a few days ago!

500+ tons of equipment and vehicles, including these advanced surveillance/deterrence SUVs.

They can literally see through walls 👀

A level of security that is incomprehensible ⚠️ pic.twitter.com/Nt94ut5Opn

— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) May 13, 2026

The purpose of the custom tops on the Hongqi SUVs is unknown, but they would offer space to fit additional outsized equipment. Possible options might include an electronic warfare system, directed energy weapon, or a communications array. On the subject of advanced electronic warfare systems and directed energy weapons, these capabilities are set to become increasingly commonplace in VVIP motorcades, in general, due to the danger of drone attacks.

A new high-top roof could allow individuals to stand up fully while still inside the vehicle, but the benefit that would provide in this case is unclear. There are no obvious apertures or firing ports. It is unknown whether any part of the very top retracts to allow for the deployment of something inside. There is something of an upper fairing visible on the front, but it could be there for a number of reasons.

Whatever the case, the modified Hongqi SUVs are definitely very heavy-set, with the vehicles running visibly low on their rear axles in particular. There is also some kind of feature attached to the rear of the vehicles. However, without a full view from the rear, whether this might be a lift or something else is not clear. A lift would make some sense considering whatever is inside appears to be very heavy.

There was also clearly some value to having one of the SUVs in this configuration positioned at different points in the motorcade simultaneously. One at the front and one at the rear are seen the main video posted above.

The modified Lincoln Navigator has a far smaller, but still interesting addition to its roof, which could contain an electronic warfare and/or satellite communications systems. It also has what may be a small electro-optical sensor turret on top of the front end of the roof. Several whip-type antennas mounted on top of the vehicle are also seen.

It is worth noting here that marked Chinese Police Ford F-150 pickups were also seen deployed in Beijing during Trump’s visit with a roughly similar configuration, including the sensor turret on top.

The Chevy Suburban also has a slightly raised roof with an array of antennas, including an X-shaped type commonly associated with UHF satellite communications arrays. Interestingly, this SUV looks similar in some broad respects to Suburbans configured as command, control, and communications support vehicles that the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) and certain elements of the U.S. military have operated over the years. These are more commonly referred to as “Roadrunners” and are a staple in U.S. presidential motorcades, as you can read more about here. As already noted, this particular SUV had a type of license plate pointing to a foreign owner. While we know that this is not a U.S. Secret Service vehicle, the WCHA or another U.S. government operator could still be a possibility.

Last, there is the Ford E-series van. The available views of this vehicle are more limited, but it does have a modified roof with what look to be work lights positioned at various points around the edges. This is in addition to the red and blue emergency lights along the front edge. There is also an unknown feature at the top left corner of the roof, which has a cone-shaped protrusion at the front. Its purpose is not immediately clear.

Vans are inherently multi-purpose vehicles by design, and Chinese policies are known to use marked E-series types for various purposes, including riot control. It is possible this particular example could be part of a rapid response team, or serve some other function.

In general, specialized, unique, and sometimes unusual vehicles are common to see in VIP motorcades, especially presidential ones. TWZ has been among the first to call attention to new additions to the U.S. presidential motorcade lineup, in particular, over the years. This includes the appearance of new Cadillac Escalade presidential limousines just in January of this year.

If the vehicles seen during Trump’s recent trip to China, especially the Hongqi SUVs with the huge custom tops, continue to be features of motorcades during state visits by prominent leaders to Beijing, more details about their configuration and functions may emerge.

Special thanks to Newsweek‘s Ryan Chan for bringing this to our attention.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Early signs point to the United States and China moving towards a relationship focused on pragmatic areas of common interest following US President Donald Trump’s trip to China, according to analysts, setting aside the turmoil that marked 2025.

Trump was in Beijing for three days this week to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, accompanied by a delegation of American CEOs, including the heads of Apple, Nvidia, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.

The meeting between the two leaders came just over six months after they agreed to pause the US-China trade war for a year on the sidelines of a multilateral summit in South Korea. While a frequent critic of China’s economic policies at home, Trump appeared to get along with Xi in person throughout his trip and lavished praise on the Chinese leader.

“It’s an honour to be with you, it’s an honour to be your friend, and the relationship between China and the USA is going to be better than ever before,” Trump told Xi on Thursday.

The White House readout of the Trump-Xi meeting on Thursday stressed areas of common ground, stating that the leaders had “discussed ways to enhance economic cooperation between our two countries” by “expanding market access for American businesses into China and increasing Chinese investment into our industries”.

Notably absent from the statement was any mention of China’s export controls on rare earths, critical materials used across the tech, defence and energy sectors. China controls nearly the entire industry, and it has moved to restrict US access.

William Yang, senior Northeast Asia analyst at the Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s remarks showed he would likely try to compartmentalise US-China relations into areas where the two sides can work together without being overshadowed by geopolitical concerns.

Xi, while less effusive, also spoke of his desire to move towards a new US-China framework based on “constructive strategic stability”, meaning that the US and China should try to “minimise competition, manage differences and allow stability to be the foundation of the bilateral relationship”, according to Yang.

Both leaders appear to have sidestepped other controversial issues, such as the status of Taiwan, a 23 million-person democracy claimed by Beijing but unofficially backed by Washington.

Xi told Trump during their meeting that Taiwan was the “most important issue” in the US-China relationship, and that mishandling it could lead to “clashes and even conflicts” between the two sides. Beijing objects to Washington’s ongoing military support of Taiwan and has pressed the US to take a more explicit line on Taiwan’s political status.

Although the US does not recognise the government in Taipei, it maintains a deliberately vague policy on China’s territorial claims. Despite the controversy, neither the Chinese nor the US readout mentioned whether Trump discussed Taiwan or the future of arms sales – suggesting he either disagreed with Xi or avoided the topic.

Analysts like Yang say it is still too soon to know whether Trump will heed Xi’s remarks by blocking or delaying a $14bn arms deal reportedly in the works for Taiwan. The deal would need Trump’s sign-off to move forward, according to US legislators.

Xi was equally circumspect on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, which has been shuttered since the US and Israel launched a war on Iran on February 28.

Trump has previously pushed China to encourage Iran to reopen the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passed each year before the war, because of its close relationship with Tehran. China and Iran signed a 25-year “strategic partnership” in 2021, and Beijing buys 80 to 90 percent of Iran’s oil annually.

Trump raised the points again in his meeting with Xi in Beijing, according to the US readout, which said the two leaders “agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open to support the free flow of energy”.

“President Xi also made clear China’s opposition to the militarisation of the Strait and any effort to charge a toll for its use, and he expressed interest in purchasing more American oil to reduce China’s dependence on the Strait in the future. Both countries agreed that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon,” the readout said.

The Chinese readout of their meeting on Thursday did not include mention of Iran or its nuclear programme.

Chucheng Feng, founding partner of Hutong Research based in Beijing, told Al Jazeera that the omissions reflect that Xi and Trump still disagree on key issues, including Iran, but that the overall message from the summit was a desire to move forward.

“For Beijing, the most important thing is to find a floor for the relationship, to set up and enhance guardrails so that no surprises or uncontrolled escalations suddenly emerge. For that, item-by-item disagreements are largely secondary,” he said.

BEIJING — A conciliatory President Trump on Friday hailed success in his state visit to China, claiming a tonal reset with Xi Jinping despite departing Beijing with few concrete achievements.

The visual spectacle around Trump’s visit was itself considered a breakthrough by the two sides, who expressed an eagerness entering the talks to move on from a yearslong stretch of deteriorating relations.

But Trump’s homage and deference to Xi were a striking display of an often commanding president adapting to a new power dynamic, understanding China’s rise and its emerging role in the world.

Trump deployed a charm offensive throughout his stay here, confident in the impact of his personal touch on world leaders, often seen patting Xi on the back and repeatedly calling him his friend.

Yet in private, tensions gripped negotiations that touched nearly every major issue on Trump’s agenda, from trade relations to the U.S. war in Iran.

“He’s all business,” Trump said from Beijing in an interview with Fox.

China agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets and spend billions on American agricultural products, U.S. officials said — modest deals that fall short of restoring Chinese investment levels to their pre–2025 highs, before Trump launched a trade war that aggressively targeted Beijing.

Nevertheless, Trump referred to the trade agreements as “fantastic,” and said Xi had also pledged to purchase U.S. energy going forward. Beijing did not confirm any such agreement.

Nor did the Chinese Foreign Ministry comment on any commitment to help the United States reopen the Strait of Hormuz, effectively shuttered by Iran since the Trump administration launched a war against the Islamic Republic earlier this year.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump participate in a friendship walk through Zhongnanhai Garden Fridah in Beijing.

(Evan Vucci / Pool / Reuters via Associated Press)

“We feel very similar on Iran, we want that to end,” Trump said Friday. “We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits opened, and we want them to get it ended, because it’s a crazy thing — they’re a little bit crazy.”

At the beginning of the summit, Xi warned the Trump administration that the longstanding U.S. position of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan had set the two nations on a collision course, Chinese state media reported. But departing Beijing, Marco Rubio, the president’s national security advisor and secretary of state, said that Washington’s position on Taiwan remained “unchanged.”

Their second day of meetings was held at Zhongnanhai, an imperial garden and lake district that has served as the secretive seat of power for the Chinese Communist Party since the revolution of 1949.

The two men strolled quiet pathways dotted with Chinese roses and ornamental archways before taking tea and lunch in Xi’s private quarters. Trump was offered rose seeds to bring home for the White House Rose Garden, the Chinese said.

“This has been an incredible visit,” Trump told reporters at the compound. “A lot of good has come of it.”

It was not the first time that Xi has hosted a president at the historic compound. In 2014, the Chinese leader, still relatively new to the presidency, hosted President Obama overnight at Zhongnanhai, where the two met in private over dinner.

President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping tour Zhongnanhai Garden.

(Evan Vucci / Pool / Getty Images)

It was another smoggy day for Trump in the Chinese capital, although cooler than Thursday, when Xi greeted Trump at the footsteps of Tiananmen Square with a lavish state welcome. There, Xi hosted Trump and his delegation at the Great Hall of the People for a day of meetings and a banquet dinner of Peking duck and pan-fried pork buns.

The two men will have future opportunities to meet, with Trump inviting Xi to Washington for a state visit at the White House in September.

“He’s a man I respect greatly,” Trump said.

US President Donald Trump returns to Beijing after nine years to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. The trade war, conflict in Iran, and rising fears over Taiwan shape the talks. With global tensions mounting, can the two leaders find common ground, or will rivalry push the world further into crisis?

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Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Marcos Bartolomé and Sarí el-Khalili with Spencer Cline, Catherine Nouhan, Tuleen Barakat, Alexandra Locke, and our guest host, Kevin Hirten. It was edited by Tamara Khandaker. 

Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. 

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BEIJING — An extraordinary display of power and precision along Tiananmen Square greeted President Trump in Beijing on Thursday, kicking off a two-day summit with particularly high stakes for the Americans.

Trump’s meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, began at the Great Hall of the People moments after a welcome ceremony that seemed to impress the president, featuring a Chinese military honor guard and a greeting from excited school children. American flags waved as “The Star Spangled Banner” rang out on a smoggy day in the heart of the capital.

Children holding Chinese and U.S. flags rehearse before the welcome ceremony for President Trump.

(Maxim Shemetov / Associated Press)

Trump reflected on the stakes of his visit at the top of the meeting, telling Xi that the ceremony was an honor “like few I’ve seen before.”

“There are those who say it may be the biggest summit ever,” he said. “I have such respect for China, the job you’ve done.”

Both men struck a conciliatory tone, despite the agenda for the summit featuring some of the thorniest issues facing the two superpowers today, from the U.S. war in Iran to trade relations and the future of Taiwan.

“We’ve gotten along — when there have been difficulties, we’ve worked it out,” Trump added. “We’re going to have a fantastic future together.”

Trump is expected to ask Xi for help reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a vital commercial waterway disrupted by Iran since the start of the war, and for the extension of a truce in the trade war he started at the beginning of his second term.

China, in turn, will ask the Trump administration not to proceed with arms sales to Taiwan, despite their approval by Congress, and for a declaration of opposition to Taiwanese independence. Beijing also seeks access to top-end chips made by American manufacturers.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump shake hands at the Great Hall of the People.

(Kenny Holston / Associated Press)

The agenda exposes the mutual dependence of the two rival superpowers, marked by distrust but driven by a quest for cooperation and stability.

The welcome ceremony outside of the Great Hall kicked off with Xi shaking the hands of Trump’s delegation, including figures such as his political advisor, James Blair, his communications director, Steven Cheung, and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.

They were just a few members of a U.S. delegation accompanying Trump filled with curiosities.

Chinese officials were surprised to learn that Pete Hegseth was joining Trump in Beijing this week, marking the first time a president has brought his secretary of defense on an official state visit. It wasn’t immediately clear to the Chinese what his inclusion was meant to convey.

Eric Trump, the president’s son, is here, seeking to leverage the family name for lucrative business deals as Beijing aggressively campaigns against government corruption at home. And First Lady Melania Trump decided to stay at home, an unusual snub of such a high-level event.

A contingent of U.S. business leaders was given little notice to prepare for the trip, including the CEO of Nvidia, who raced to join Trump aboard Air Force One at a refueling stop in Alaksa.

The diplomatic faux pas follow weeks of Chinese frustration over what they see as the Trump administration’s lack of preparation — a perceived display of incompetence that boosts their confidence heading into the negotiations.

Over the course of the visit, Trump is expected to visit the Temple of Heaven, a monument to imperial China and Confucian thought in the center of Beijing. Ahead of Trump’s arrival, an area roughly the size of 400 American football fields was closed in preparation for a stop here.

On Thursday night, local time, Trump will return to the Great Hall of the People for a banquet dinner. Additional meetings are scheduled for Friday morning before Trump departs midday for home.

BEIJING — President Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday for his hotly anticipated talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the Iran war, trade and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

The meat of the summit doesn’t start until Thursday, when the leaders hold bilateral talks, visit the Temple of Heaven, where Chinese emperors once prayed for bumper crops, and take part in a formal banquet. But the Chinese offered Trump a pomp-filled welcome, literally rolling out the red carpet for him after Air Force One landed in the Chinese capital.

The president was greeted by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng; Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to Washington; Ma Zhaoxu, executive vice minister of foreign affairs; and the U.S. envoy to Beijing, David Perdue.

The welcoming ceremony included a military honor guard, a military band and some 300 Chinese youths waving Chinese and American flags and chanting, “Welcome, welcome! Warm welcome!” as Trump made his way to his waiting limousine. The youth greeters were decked out in white and robin’s egg blue outfits that matched the paint job of the iconic presidential plane.

President Trump walks with China’s Vice President Han Zheng during an arrival ceremony Wednesday at Beijing Capital International Airport, as Eric and Lara Trump, Elon Musk, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer follow.

(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)

“We’re the two superpowers,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Tuesday for the long flight to Beijing. “We’re the strongest nation on Earth in terms of military. China’s considered second.”

While Trump likes to project a sense of strength, the visit occurs at a delicate moment for his presidency as his popularity at home has been weighed down by the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran and rising inflation as a consequence of that conflict. The Republican president is seeking a win by signing deals with China to buy more American soybeans, beef and aircraft, saying he’ll be talking with Xi about trade “more than anything else.”

The Trump administration hopes to begin establishing a Board of Trade with China to address differences between the countries. The board could help prevent the trade war ignited last year after Trump’s tariff hikes, an action China countered through its control of rare earth minerals. That led to a one-year truce last October.

But Trump is visiting Beijing when Iran continues to dominate his domestic agenda. The war has led to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, stranding oil and natural gas tankers and causing energy prices to spike to levels that could sabotage global economic growth. The U.S. president declared that Xi didn’t need to assist in resolving the conflict, even though Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was in Beijing last week.

Fellow rescuers carry the coffins of two members of the civil defense who were reportedly killed in Israeli airstrikes in Nabatieh the previous day, during their funeral in the southern city of Sidon on May 13, 2026. Israel hammered south Lebanon with strikes on May 12 ahead of talks between the two countries in Washington, as Beirut reported 380 people killed in Israeli attacks since an April 17 ceasefire took effect.

(Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP via Getty Images)

“We have a lot of things to discuss. I wouldn’t say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control,” Trump told reporters Tuesday.

Taiwan high on the agenda

The status of Taiwan also will be a major topic as China is displeased with U.S. plans to sell weapons to the self-governing island, which the Chinese government claims as part of its own territory.

Trump told reporters on Monday that he would be discussing with Xi an $11 billion weapons package for Taiwan that the U.S. administration authorized in December but has not yet begun fulfilling. The arms package is the largest ever approved for Taiwan.

But Trump has demonstrated greater ambivalence toward Taiwan, an approach that’s raising questions about whether the U.S. leader could be open to dialing back support for the island democracy.

The Taiwanese flag at Democracy Boulevard is lowered at the end of the day as the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall is seen in the background in Taipei on May 13, 2026.

(I-Hwa Cheng/AFP via Getty Images)

At the same time, Taiwan — as the world’s leading chipmaker — has become essential for the development of artificial intelligence, with the U.S. importing more goods so far this year from Taiwan than China. Trump has sought to use Biden-era programs and his own deals to bring more chipmaking to America.

The Chinese Communist Party’s news outlet, People’s Daily, published a strongly worded editorial ahead of Trump’s arrival underscoring that Taiwan is “the first red line that cannot be crossed in China-U.S. relations” and is “the biggest point of risk” between the two nations.

Trump was already portraying the trip as a success before he even left White House grounds. He openly mused about Xi’s planned reciprocal visit to the U.S. later this year, lamenting that the White House ballroom under construction would not be completed in time to properly fete the Chinese leader.

“We’re going to have a great relationship for many, many decades to come,” Trump said of the U.S. and China.

Counter snipers and other security forces watch over Air Force One while refueling at Joint Base Elmendorf during a trip with US President Donald J. Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, on May 12, 2026. Donald Trump was due in Beijing on May 13, 2026 on the first visit to China by a US president in nearly a decade, as he seeks to ramp up trade despite potential friction over Taiwan and Iran.

(Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump embarked on Air Force One for the big meeting with a coterie of aides, family members and business world titans, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk. While en route to Beijing, he posted on social media that his “first request” to Xi during the visit will be to ask the Chinese leader to bolster the presence of U.S. firms in China.

“I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to ‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic, and help bring the People’s Republic to an even higher level!” Trump wrote.

Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon and China’s President Xi Jinping attend a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People on Tuesday, in Beijing.

(Maxim Shemetov—Pool / Getty Images)

Despite Trump’s outward confidence, China appears to be entering the meeting from “a much stronger place,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser on Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

China would like to reduce tech restrictions on accessing computer chips and find ways to reduce tariffs, among other goals.

“But even if they don’t get much on any of those things, as long as there’s not a blow-up in the meeting and President Trump doesn’t go away and look to re-escalate, China basically comes out stronger,” Kennedy said.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng met on Wednesday to discuss economic and trade issues at Incheon International Airport, just west of the South Korean capital of Seoul, according to the Chinese state run Xinhua News Agency.

Bystanders are kept back by police tape as they film the motorcade of President Donald Trump as he arrives at the Four Seasons Hotel on Wednesday in Beijing.

(Kevin Frayer / Getty Images)

Trump wants 3-way nuclear arms deal

Trump also intends to raise the idea of the U.S., China and Russia signing a pact that would set limits on the nuclear weapons each nation keeps in its arsenal, according to a senior Trump administration official who briefed reporters ahead of the trip. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.

China has previously been cool to entering such a pact. Beijing’s arsenal, according to Pentagon estimates, exceeds more than 600 operational nuclear warheads and is far from parity with the U.S. and Russia, which each are estimated to have more than 5,000 nuclear warheads.

The last nuclear arms pact, known as the New START treaty, between Russia and the United States expired in February, removing any caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century. As the treaty was set to expire, Trump rejected a call by Russia to extend the two-country deal for another year and called for “a new, improved, and modernized” deal that includes China.

The Pentagon estimates China will have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030.

Madhani, Weissert and Boak write for the Associated Press. Boak reported from Washington. AP writers Darlene Superville in Washington, Huizhong Wu in Bangkok, Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Kanis Leung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

United States President Donald Trump has departed for Beijing ahead of a high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, after weeks of unsuccessful US efforts to persuade China to help bring Iran back to negotiations and ease tensions around the Strait of Hormuz.

The leaders of the world’s two largest economies are due to meet on Thursday and Friday during Trump’s first visit to China since 2017, with talks expected to focus on trade, Taiwan, artificial intelligence and the war involving Iran.

Here is what we know about the upcoming summit and the key issues expected to dominate the agenda.

Why does the Trump-Xi summit matter?

The Trump-Xi summit is a high-level meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping taking place in Beijing as the world’s two largest economies face growing tensions over trade, technology, Taiwan and the Iran war.

The summit is particularly significant because Trump will be the first US leader to visit China in nearly a decade, while the talks also come at a time of heightened geopolitical and economic uncertainty. Originally expected earlier this year, the meeting was delayed by the war on Iran.

Before departing for Beijing, Trump said he and Xi would have a “long talk” about Iran, although he stressed that trade would remain the central focus of the visit.

“Trade remains politically powerful, especially for Trump, because it gives rivalry a language that voters can easily understand,” said Salvador Santino Regilme, associate professor and programme chair of international relations at Leiden University. “Yet the deeper conflict concerns hierarchy, legitimacy and the future architecture of global order.”

Regilme added that both countries remain locked in a relationship shaped by strategic rivalry and deep economic dependence.

“The United States still relies heavily on China’s manufacturing capacity and low-cost production, while China depends on access to US consumers, technology, capital markets and the wider stability of the dollar-centred global economy.”

“This is the paradox of US-China rivalry: each side wants greater autonomy, yet both remain tied to a structure of mutual dependence that neither can easily dismantle without hurting itself,” Regilme added.

What are the biggest issues at the Trump-Xi summit?

Analysts say the US and China are entering the summit with different priorities.

Trump is expected to focus heavily on trade with the aim of securing what he can present as economic wins ahead of November’s midterm elections. Washington has pushed for China to increase purchases of American goods, including Boeing aircraft, beef and soya beans, while also seeking closer investment and trade cooperation.

Beijing, meanwhile, is expected to press the US to ease restrictions on advanced semiconductor exports and roll back measures limiting China’s access to critical chip-making technology. Taiwan is also likely to remain one of the most sensitive and contested issues in the summit.

Trump has also said he plans to raise the case of Jimmy Lai, the jailed Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy figure sentenced earlier this year under Beijing’s national security law.

Beyond bilateral disputes, the two leaders are also expected to discuss the war on Iran, tensions around the Strait of Hormuz and the growing risks linked to artificial intelligence.

The biggest flashpoints include:

Tech vs rare earths

Technology and supply chains are expected to be among the key issues at the summit, as Washington and Beijing remain locked in a widening battle over semiconductors and critical minerals.

The US has tightened restrictions on advanced chips and chip-making equipment going to China, saying the measures are needed to slow Beijing’s military and AI development.

China, meanwhile, controls roughly 90 percent of global rare earth refining, materials essential for semiconductors, electric vehicles, military equipment and electronics, and has responded with tighter export controls on several critical minerals.

Beijing is expected to push for fewer US technology restrictions, while Washington wants China to resume shipments of rare earths and critical minerals after export controls disrupted parts of the American automotive and aerospace sectors.

 Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz

The Iran war is expected to be one of the most closely watched issues at the summit.

Analysts expect Washington to press Beijing to use its influence over Tehran, particularly because China remains the largest buyer of Iranian oil — by far — purchasing more than 80 percent of Iran’s shipped crude exports. US officials have also urged China to support efforts to reopen and secure the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global energy supplies.

The conflict has also increased pressure on China’s economy and energy security. About half of China’s crude oil imports come from the Middle East, while disruptions in the Gulf have left commercial shipping vulnerable to attacks and delays.

“I have no doubt that Trump is going to at least try to enlist Xi Jinping to assert some pressure for the Iranians to come back to the table and agree to a settlement,” said Dan Grazier, a senior fellow and director of the National Security Reform programme at the Stimson Center.

Experts say Iran may be one of the few areas where US and Chinese interests overlap, as both countries benefit from stable energy flows through the Gulf.

“Both sides would like to see the strait opened,” said Gregory Poling, director and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), but he noted Beijing is unlikely to align itself too closely with Washington’s approach towards Tehran.

While China wants shipping through the Strait of Hormuz restored, Poling argued the diplomatic and strategic pressure created by the disruption is falling far more heavily on Washington.

“It is not China being humiliated in the strait … It’s the US.”

Taiwan: An existential problem

Taiwan is expected to be one of the most sensitive issues, with Beijing repeatedly warning that it remains the biggest source of tension in US-China relations.

China claims the self-ruled island as part of its territory and has increased military pressure on Taiwan in recent years through regular air and naval operations around the island.

Tensions have risen further under Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing has sharply criticised because his party views Taiwan as already sovereign.

The US officially recognises the communist mainland as China but is legally committed under the Taiwan Relations Act to support Taiwan’s self-defence, a policy that has long angered China. Washington has approved tens of billions of dollars in military sales to Taiwan over the years, including an $11bn package announced last year, and Trump recently said he discussed the issue with Xi ahead of the summit.

Analysts say Taiwan will be paying close attention to what Trump and Xi say publicly after the summit, especially on defence and arms sales.

“What matters is the precise wording,” Regilme said. “Whether Trump reaffirms support for Taiwan’s defence, whether he sounds ambiguous on arms sales, and whether he gives Xi any rhetorical opening to claim that Washington is restraining Taipei.”

Regilme said Beijing is likely to push for limits on US arms sales and stronger political restrictions on Taiwan, while also discouraging any movement towards formal independence. At the same time, Taipei fears it could become part of a broader geopolitical bargain between Washington and Beijing.

“In great-power politics, small words often carry large consequences, especially for those whose survival depends on the credibility of others,” Regilme added.

Tariffs

Trade is also expected to be a sticking point after years of friction between the US and China over tariffs and economic competition.

The latest trade dispute intensified last year when Trump imposed new tariffs on Chinese goods. China responded with its own tariffs.

At the height of the dispute, tariffs on some goods climbed above 100 percent, prompting concerns about the impact on global trade and supply chains.

The two countries later agreed to temporarily lower tensions through a trade truce reached during talks in South Korea. As part of the deal, China agreed to buy more US agricultural products, including soya beans, while Washington rolled back some tariffs.

What would count as a successful outcome for Trump and Xi?

Analysts say a successful outcome for Trump would likely need to be visible and easy to sell politically at home. That could include Chinese purchases of US goods, movement on tariffs, cooperation on Iran, or progress on rare earth exports.

“Trump’s foreign policy style places enormous value on the public performance of dealmaking, so the optics of success may matter almost as much as the substance,” Regilme said.

For Xi, success would mean preserving stability without appearing to bow to Washington, while securing greater economic predictability and recognition of China as a global power.

“A comprehensive trade deal seems unlikely because the structural sources of rivalry remain unresolved,” Regilme added.

Instead, he said a limited agreement is more likely, potentially involving tariff pauses, purchase commitments, rare earth arrangements or a framework for future negotiations.

“Such an agreement would manage the rivalry temporarily, while leaving untouched the deeper problem: the two economies remain mutually dependent, but their governments increasingly treat that dependency as a strategic danger.”

BEIJING — The Trump administration has repeatedly framed the war in Iran as a quick, winnable fight, vowing to defeat the Islamic Republic “totally and decisively” — incomparable to the “dumb” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But from China’s perspective, the parallels are clear.

“You can blow everything up — destroy it all,” one Chinese official told The Times, describing the Americans, “but you don’t have a strategy.”

President Trump arrives in Beijing this week for talks with a Chinese government that is confident as ever in its ascendance on the world stage, taking stock of its leverage and still baffled the U.S. administration chose yet another costly war in the Middle East.

China has watched as the United States, over seven weeks of fighting an outmatched enemy, has depleted nearly half of its stockpiles of high-end munitions — including its THAAD and Patriot batteries — and fired its Army chief of staff, among other Pentagon leaders, who had warned of critical shortages.

Marco Rubio, Trump’s national security advisor and secretary of State, has said the military operation that started the war known as Operation Epic Fury “is over.”

But the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most vital commercial waterways, remains effectively shuttered. Iranian attacks in the region continue. And talks between Washington and Tehran have failed to reach a diplomatic agreement to bring a definitive end to the conflict.

“The Chinese have high regard for the operational proficiency of U.S. forces, but they recognize that, thus far at least, the Trump administration has not achieved its core objectives in going to war with Iran,” said David Ochmanek, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense now with the Rand Corp.

The war has given Beijing an opportunity, Ochmanek said, “to double down on the claim they have made for the past year and a half that the [People’s Republic of China], not the U.S., is a force for global stability.”

The war has allowed China to demonstrate some diplomatic prowess. An initial ceasefire reached between the United States and Iran last month was only clinched after Beijing pressured Tehran to agree. And China’s advocacy for an open strait — rejecting Iranian attempts to impose a toll system — while opposing the U.S. war itself has allowed Beijing to maintain leverage with both sides.

It has also inflicted costs. Allies of Beijing noticed when the government did not leap to the defense of Tehran at the start of the war. And China has its own vested interest in a free and open waterway, where nearly 50% of the country’s crude oil imports pass through each day.

Building up to the start of the war and throughout its initial weeks, Washington diverted significant military assets from Asia — where Trump’s own national security strategy says they are needed most — to the Middle East.

The USS Abraham Lincoln was redirected from the South China Sea, along with scores of advanced missile interceptors from South Korea and Japan and nearly the entire U.S. inventory of long-range air-to-surface missiles in the Pacific.

Policy experts at the Pentagon were brought in to discuss a potential invasion of Kharg Island, the jewel of Iran’s oil industry, to draw lessons from planning a defense of Taiwan, according to a Defense official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. A Marine expeditionary unit was sent from Okinawa to the region for the potential operation.

Chinese officials and analysts have been candid in their assessments of U.S. hard power, impressed by a military they acknowledge remains the best in the world.

But Beijing sees a persistent flaw in U.S. strategy: the belief that military strength alone can reshape political realities, a view further weakened by the pressures on a democratic government whose public grows impatient with wars that drag on beyond days or weeks.

China’s autocracy is free from accountability to the public — and anyway has confidence that Chinese public opinion would be on its side if it were to launch a major military operation against its main target, Taiwan.

But there are lessons of caution to be learned from the Americans, as well.

Over the last year, the Taiwanese Navy has been practicing the rapid deployment of cheap and domestically produced smart mines for the sea — a potential bulwark against enemy blockades of ports and hostile invasion forces.

It is the type of asymmetric warfare that has so far frustrated the U.S. military in the Strait of Hormuz, protracting a war that Trump vowed would last a month or less.

Taiwan, too, would confront Beijing with political realities that military force cannot erase. Nearly 90% of the Taiwanese people oppose a Chinese takeover, and about 60% say they would resist it at all costs.

“Chinese analysts see two things at once,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “They are impressed by U.S. military reach, precision and operational capability, but they also see a familiar pattern of American power struggling to translate battlefield success into a durable political outcome.”

That matters for Taiwan, Singleton said, “because China’s own military modernization has borrowed heavily from the American model, relying heavily on joint operations, high-tech precision strikes, decapitation concepts and information dominance.

“If the world’s most experienced military can still struggle to convert military pressure into political success,” he added, “Beijing has to ask whether the [People’s Liberation Army] could do better in a far more complex Taiwan scenario.”

BEIJING — President Trump’s first visit to China in nine years is a high-stakes trip reflecting the rivalry and mutual dependence of two superpowers hoping to avoid a collision course — even if Trump cast it more as a meeting between close friends and business partners.

Speaking to reporters before departing Washington on Tuesday, Trump downplayed tensions between the two countries, including on trade, calling Chinese President Xi Jinping a “wonderful guy” and a friend and saying the working relationship between the two countries is “very good.”

Trump acknowledged China’s might — saying that the Asian nation and the United States are clearly the world’s two superpowers — and that the focus of the meeting “more than anything else will be trade.”

“We’re gonna have a great relationship for many, many decades to come,” Trump said. “My relationship with President Xi is a fantastic one. We’ve always gotten along, and we’re doing very well with China, and working with China’s been very good — so we look forward to it.”

Trump also downplayed the importance of the meeting for the war in Iran. He said Xi might be able to help the United States reach a deal to end the war, but that he doesn’t need it, “because we have Iran very much under control.”

The state visit marks the first by an American president to China since Trump’s trip here in 2017, only months into his first term. President Biden never came, becoming the first to not do so since diplomatic ties were normalized, an absence that underscored simmering distrust and animosity between Washington and Beijing that has only worsened since.

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In the capital, security forces sealed off an area around the Temple of Heaven roughly the size of 400 football fields ahead of the U.S. president’s visit, anticipating a stop at the monument to imperial China and Confucian thought.

On his previous trip, Trump received the rare honor of a state banquet inside the Forbidden City. This time he is expected to dine at the Great Hall of the People, an imposing structure off Tiananmen Square that hosts high-level gatherings of the Chinese Communist Party.

Trump’s positive spin on Tuesday aside, his agenda for meetings beginning Thursday with Xi highlights the vast array of American interests that depend on — and often clash with — Beijing’s policies.

After launching a trade war against China at the beginning of his second term, Trump now comes hat in hand requesting an extension of a tariff truce, fearful Xi might follow through on his threats to halt the export of rare earth minerals to the United States that are vital to the manufacturing of American goods, including everyday consumer equipment and advanced defense technologies.

His visit comes as a ceasefire in the war with Iran, brokered with help from Beijing, is on “massive life support,” according to the president. Trump is expected to appeal to Xi for assistance in getting Tehran to restore free and open passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

And in a dramatic reversal, the Trump administration has begun discussions with the Chinese about establishing a channel of communication on artificial intelligence, alarmed that recent technological leaps could pose global risks.

All of these requests are expected to come at a cost.

President Trump departs the White House on May 12, 2026, for his second state visit to China.

(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

In earlier remarks before the trip, Trump said he expected U.S. arms sale to Taiwan — including one already approved by Congress — to become a chip in the negotiations.

“I’m going to have that discussion with President Xi,” Trump said. “President Xi would like us not to, and I’ll have that discussion. That’s one of the many things I’ll be talking about.”

The notion that U.S. support for Taiwan is a negotiable matter is sure to rattle America’s allies throughout the region, from Japan to the Philippines, which are reliant on U.S. security guarantees amid China’s Indo-Pacific military aggression.

Despite geopolitical tensions, both sides are expected to announce business and investment agreements, underscoring how deeply intertwined the world’s two largest economies remain.

China plans on making a significant purchase of Boeing aircraft, and the president has brought 17 American corporate leaders with him on the trip to discuss additional opportunities, including Apple’s Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Meta’s Dina Powell McCormick and Tesla’s Elon Musk.

The two leaders are expected to have other opportunities to talk in person throughout the coming year, including potential meetings at the Group of 20 summit in Florida, the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, and a state visit in Washington that Trump said he will host for Xi at some point in the coming months.

Trump on Tuesday said Xi’s visit will be “toward the end of the year” and “exciting.” He also lamented that the ballroom he is building on the White House grounds — on the site of the historic East Wing he demolished — won’t be ready in time.

Jennifer Hong, senior director at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security, said her concern is that the state visit becomes part of a “tyranny of calendaring,” where the Chinese agree to schedule more high-level meetings sought by Trump that put off vital U.S. decision-making.

“I do think this trip is necessary for the U.S. government — I think that there are things that are on hold because he doesn’t want to rock the boat,” Hong said, noting the Trump administration’s delay in arms sales to Taiwan, despite the packages already having received congressional approval.

“I’m just worried this will be a stringing along of promises, or maybe some reprieve for a year or so,” she added, “as we continue to handicap ourselves on national security matters for the sake of more meetings.”

Trump on Tuesday repeatedly dismissed China’s potential help in resolving the war in Iran, which has driven up prices domestically and around the world as oil shipments through the strategic Strait of Hormuz have been badly disrupted and U.S. efforts to fully reopen the channel have so far been unsuccessful.

“I don’t think we need any help with Iran, to be honest with you,” Trump said. “They’re defeated militarily.”

Trump also said the financial pain many Americans are feeling from the war, including at the gas pump, simply isn’t a factor — “not even a little bit,” he said — in his ongoing negotiations with Iran.

“The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran [is that] they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

Donald Trump gives conflicting messages on prominence of Iran war in upcoming talks, with his administration emphasising trade.

United States President Donald Trump has departed the White House en route to Beijing, where he will meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Trump spoke briefly with reporters on Tuesday as he boarded the Marine One helicopter. He was then set to arrive in China aboard Air Force One on Wednesday, ahead of the planned meetings on Thursday and Friday.

United States officials have taken pains in recent days to downplay how big a topic the US-Israel war on Iran will be during Trump’s visit.

Beijing has made its opposition to the war clear, at times asserting behind-the-scenes pressure on its trading partner Iran. However, it has largely avoided being pulled into the fray.

In recent days, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have stepped up their calls for China to use its influence to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flowed before the war began.

But Trump again gave conflicting messages on Tuesday about how much the war would feature in his meetings in China.

“We’re going to have a long talk about it. I think he’s been relatively good, to be honest with you,” Trump said of his plans to discuss the conflict – and how it has roiled global oil markets – with Xi.

Minutes later, he added, “We have a lot of things to discuss. I wouldn’t say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control.”

“I don’t think we need ⁠any help with Iran. We’ll win it one way or the other, peacefully or otherwise,” he said.

Trade to loom large

The upcoming meetings will be the first face-to-face exchanges since the leaders of the world’s two largest economies met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Busan, South Korea, in October 2025.

It is the second time Trump will travel to China as president, and the first time since his second term began on January 20, 2025. Xi is expected to travel to the US later this year.

Beyond the war, the US administration has stressed that trade will be a top subject discussed, with Trump seeking a series of business deals and agreements.

Underscoring that initiative, Trump invited an array of US business leaders to accompany him on the trip, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who had previously chaired Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Both sides are expected to seek to avoid a return to the tariff war that defined Trump’s early days in office, which saw Trump set tariffs on Chinese goods at 145 percent, while China announced a further tightening of rare-earth export controls that would have hurt US industry.

The two sides reached a fragile truce in October of last year.

China’s continued support for Iran’s ballistic programme and its defence of Tehran’s nuclear programme has also risked again derailing relations.

Last month, Trump threatened to impose a 50 percent tariff on China after reports that Beijing was preparing to deliver a shipment of new air defence systems to Iran. He later backed away from the threat, claiming that he had received written assurance from Xi that he would not provide Tehran with weaponry.

Days later, Trump said that the US Navy had intercepted a Chinese vessel carrying a “gift” for Iran. Neither side offered further details of the incident.

Xi was also expected to push Trump on US arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its own.

CHONGQING, China — Three years ago, in the idyllic town of Woodside south of San Francisco, the United States and China held their first high-level talks on the dangers posed by artificial intelligence. President Xi Jinping and his longtime foreign minister appeared serious in their conviction that a channel should be a established between Beijing and Washington — a red phone for AI in case of emergencies.

They authorized a diplomatic effort that would begin in 2024 in Switzerland, only months before the U.S. presidential election. A large U.S. delegation arrived with high hopes that were abruptly dashed, according to four sources who attended the talks. The Chinese contingent dismissed American concerns over runaway AI as academic, almost theoretical, quickly turning the conversation to export controls seen in Beijing as yet another U.S. effort to hold China back.

“They naturally view any American diplomatic initiative involving limitations or restrictions of one flavor or another on a capability as being a trap,” Jake Sullivan, U.S. national security advisor under President Biden, said in an interview.

Despite the distrust — and Democrats losing the White House to Donald Trump — an accord was struck in November of that year in Peru, where both sides agreed to keep AI out of the command and control of nuclear weapons.

“It was a breaking of the seal that we could actually do something on AI,” Sullivan said. “In the transition, I told the incoming Trump team that they should really pick up that dialogue. But the Trump administration’s view was just far more laissez-faire, and they didn’t seem particularly interested in it.”

“That’s all changed in the past few weeks,” he added.

A Trump administration once eager to gun for technological supremacy is now, for the first time, reckoning with the power AI could unleash if left unchecked.

In a surprise reversal, quiet discussions have taken place ahead of President Trump’s state visit to China this week to explore reviving talks on an emergency channel, officials told The Times, prompted by shared alarm in Beijing and Washington over the debut of Mythos, Anthropic’s powerful new model.

One senior administration official told reporters Sunday that the White House was looking to create a channel of communication for AI like others that they have “in many areas that have intense focus with the U.S. and China.”

“I think what that channel of communication looks like, its formality and what that looks like, is yet to be determined,” the official said, “but we want to take this opportunity with the leaders meeting to open up a conversation. We should establish a channel of communication on that matter.”

Mythos’ capabilities are seen across the industry and government as those of an unprecedented cyberweapon, able to infiltrate and exploit digital communication systems — including government databases, financial institutions and healthcare programs — with untold consequences.

Whether an announcement will come to fruition this week is not yet clear. Any talks between the United States and China over AI regulations — designing some kind of arms control agreement governing the use of a technology that neither side fully understands or controls — will be fraught with suspicion, misunderstandings and risk, experts say.

“Right now, there is almost no support from U.S. policymakers to engage in formal discussions on AI governance with China,” said Aalok Mehta, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The logic is that this is a winner-takes-all race,” Mehta said, “and that it’s imperative to accelerate AI progress to ensure that the United States wins that race.”

America in the lead

China would enter those discussions with a powerful argument, that U.S. leadership in AI — and the prevailing strategy of American AI companies — is propelling the world to a fraught frontier.

Every major U.S. player in the arena — OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft and Meta Platforms — is racing to be the first to build a model capable of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a threshold without a common definition, but that most agree will require a model to perform any intellectual human task.

The prevailing theory is that the first to achieve AGI will secure a prize that multiplies itself: a self-training, recursively improving intelligence, growing exponentially and leaving all competitors in its wake.

Chinese companies, by contrast, are following a state-sanctioned strategy focused on integrating AI into siloed industries and systems, training models to improve individual tasks and accelerate growth in a more tailored approach.

“The Chinese believe there is no single race, but multiple races,” said Scott Kennedy, senior advisor on Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. “The U.S. is focused on achieving AGI, while China is focused on diffusion and applications of AI into the rest of their economy — manufacturing, humanoid robotics, all aspects of the internet of things.”

China scholars, AI industry insiders and successive administrations have questioned Beijing’s strategic thinking and forthrightness.

“It’s so baked into the community here that AGI will have this transformative potential that people can’t believe China isn’t focused on this, as well,” said Matt Sheehan, a scholar of global technology issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace with a focus on China. “It says it’s focused on applications, but is that a fake out for an AGI program hidden in the mountains somewhere?”

But most insiders believe that Beijing’s guidance to Chinese companies reveals its true intentions.

“They are not as AGI-pilled as the United States is, and I think that remains the case today,” Sullivan said, “so they regarded a lot of the conversation in the U.S. around extreme frontier risk — misalignment and loss of control — as a bit abstract, and not really as relevant to how they saw AI diffusing in China.”

President Biden greets Chinese President Xi Jinping in Woodside, Calif., in 2023.

(Doug Mills / Pool Photo)

Although China’s progress has exceeded U.S. expectations — especially since DeepSeek released its model over a year ago — the state has focused computer power on specific applications rather than the broad strategy needed to develop more powerful models capable of advancing toward AGI.

“It’s not just chips. It’s money,” Sheehan added. “China’s leading companies are much more financially constrained than U.S. companies. There’s concern over a bubble here, but OpenAI is valued at something near $800 billion. Leading Chinese companies that have gone public are valued at $20 billion. There’s just an orders-of-magnitude gap in available financing.”

Still, some in the U.S. government fear China won’t need comparable computing power if it simply steals the technology wholesale.

Doing so isn’t simple. But last month, in a memo, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy accused Chinese actors of “industrial-scale campaigns to distill U.S. frontier AI systems,” in effect replicating the performance of the most advanced existing models “at a fraction of the cost.” The memo did not accuse Beijing of endorsing the activity.

In the process, the memo added, carefully constructed security protocols are deliberately stripped away.

China’s negotiating advantage

Whatever its strategic calculus may be, China would enter talks with the Trump administration trailing in the race — while disagreeing on the nature of the finish line.

AGI, in theory, could reach a stage of recursive self-improvement that results in a loss of human understanding or control. But if it is only the Americans, and not the Chinese, seeking to reach that threshold, then who is responsible to stop it?

Daniel Remler, who led AI policy at the State Department during the Biden administration and took part in the Geneva talks, cast doubt on Chinese claims of disinterest in AGI and ignorance of its risks. China falling behind in the race is no strategic design, he said.

“Chinese technologists are close observers of the U.S. AI ecosystem, and sometimes they say what they think,” Remler said. “Many were impressed by the [Mythos] model to the point of despair. Leaders in China’s top AI labs have been vocal in recent months, even before Mythos, about how compute-constrained they are at the frontier. Some have said they may never catch their American competitors.”

Talks at this point in the race could follow a familiar pattern in the recent history of U.S.-China diplomacy, in which Beijing claims it is behind the United States in development, ultimately securing a handicap and greater concessions at the negotiating table.

In other competitive domains — such as with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and in cybersecurity negotiations between Beijing and the Obama administration — agreements were ultimately reached that Washington believes in hindsight disadvantaged American companies.

The Trump administration, Remler added, “needs to approach AI diplomacy with China with clear-eyed expectations anchored to our own national interests.”

Silicon Valley itself is divided over regulating AI. Anthropic, which was founded on concerns that other AI companies were failing to take safety and alignment concerns seriously, raised alarms over Mythos, its own model, to the Trump administration, a moment that has prompted reflection at the White House on the best path forward.

Spooked after meeting with leaders from America’s top banks over their vulnerabilities, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent internally advised U.S. government reviews of future model releases — a practice already underway in China, where the training parameters for models, known as “weights,” have been publicly released.

Even the suggestion of government oversight sparked backlash from Silicon Valley. Last week, the White House sent out a memo to reassure industry allies that submitting new models for federal review would be strictly voluntary.

If talks ultimately resume between Washington and Beijing on AI, experts believe the negotiations would be far more complex than those that resulted in arms control agreements governing nuclear weapons in the Cold War.

The superpowers would not only be discussing threats of instability to the global financial system, but also fears of proliferation — advanced AI tools getting into the hands of bad actors interested in using bio- or cyberweapons that could target both countries.

And they ultimately would have to decide whether to discuss regulating the integration of AI into the Chinese and U.S. militaries, an almost unfathomable goal between the world’s biggest adversaries, where trust is lowest and verification would be hardest.

Those in the industry who most fear what artificial superintelligence could bring have told the Trump administration that talks with China are an existential necessity.

Dario Amodei, the chief executive and co-founder of Anthropic, speaks at an event in New York in 2025.

(Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)

But even within Anthropic, which has championed diplomacy, there are concerns that Beijing could exploit its current disadvantage to entangle American industry at the cusp of its crowning achievement.

Rather than pushing for a single sweeping agreement, industry insiders are advising the administration to pursue targeted deals with Beijing to mitigate specific risks, like the pact on nuclear command and control, two industry sources said.

In private, both Xi and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi seemed to understand that the gravity of the emerging technology before them required some form of cooperation, Sullivan said.

“At a conceptual level, I believe they had a conviction on that and authorized it,” Sullivan said, “but I believe their level of urgency was considerably lower than ours, and saw this as a longer-term process that would play out over time.”

“Their level of urgency and their stake in it has gone up,” he added.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — A resolute Secretary of State Marco Rubio took to the White House lectern Tuesday and declared the United States, under President Trump’s leadership, had launched a bold new operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, based on the principle that international waterways must remain free.

An hour later, Trump walked it all back, ending the complex military endeavor after less than a day.

It was just the latest evidence to America’s allies that the word of the U.S. government is subject entirely to the president’s whims. And such is the worry fueling concerns in Taipei ahead of Trump’s state visit to China this week.

Privately, senior administration officials have assured Taiwanese leadership ahead of the trip that Trump has no intention of changing long-standing U.S. policy on the island, two sources familiar with the discussions said — a stance of “strategic ambiguity” that has avoided any declarative statements on Taiwanese independence since it was coined by Henry Kissinger 55 years ago.

A White House official was definitive that U.S. policy toward Taiwan “remains the same as the first Trump administration.”

“The U.S. One China policy, as our cross-strait policies are collectively known, is based on the Taiwan Relations Act, the three U.S.-PRC Joint Communiques and the Six Assurances to Taiwan,” the official said. “There is no change to our policy with respect to Taiwan.”

But Chinese officials told The Times that their president, Xi Jinping, intends to raise the matter as a top priority, knowing that only one person — Trump himself — speaks for the administration today.

Whether Xi can leverage the intimacy of a private audience to shift Trump’s stance, potentially linking it to other U.S. objectives, is the source of significant concern here.

Taiwanese officials fear even the most subtle rhetorical change in policy from Trump could imperil a delicate status quo that has held, to its benefit, for decades. They have similarly sought assurances that the administration will follow through on a pending U.S. arms sale worth over $10 billion, which received approval from Taiwan’s legislature on Friday.

“The most serious scenario would be if President Trump were to make an impromptu statement, such as, ‘I oppose Taiwanese independence,’ particularly if he were to link this to trade, the Iran issue, or a summit agreement,” said Chienyu Shih, of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taiwan. “This would constitute a rhetorical concession of substantial significance to Beijing.”

Rubio told reporters at his news conference Tuesday — with a similar confidence he expressed on the Iran file — that China understands Washington’s long-standing position on the island.

“I’m sure Taiwan will be a topic of conversation. It always is. The Chinese understand our position on that topic — we understand theirs,” Rubio said.

“I think both countries understand that it is in neither one of our interests to see anything destabilizing happen in that part of the world,” he added. “We don’t need any destabilizing events to occur with regards to Taiwan, or anywhere in the Indo-Pacific. And that’s to the mutual benefit of both the United States and the Chinese.”

Trump has suggested a willingness to shift U.S. policy on Taiwan before.

During his initial campaign for the presidency in 2016, Trump openly questioned the One China policy, drawing ire from Beijing for suggesting he might endorse Taiwanese independence. He accepted a call from Taiwan’s president after his victory and would later support significant arms sales to Taipei.

And yet, at a 2017 meeting with Xi, Trump vacillated, telling the Chinese leader he could “deal with” the Taiwan issue in “a matter of months,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The Chinese were reportedly so flabbergasted by the comment that they dismissed it as rhetorical flourish.

“There is concern that the conversation between the two leaders could veer into sensitive territory on the topic of Taiwan,” said Brian Hart, deputy director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “but there are many in the administration who would still appreciate the importance of general continuity in U.S. policy.”

U.S. support for Taiwan’s democratic movement used to be a matter of principle. Today, Washington sees it as a matter of national security. Over 60% of semiconductors are produced in Taiwan, including 90% of the world’s most advanced chips. And it is viewed as the clasp of the first island chain guarding against Chinese maritime expansion.

A robust debate between Taiwan’s Cabinet and the opposition in parliament ended Friday not over whether to accept U.S. defense equipment, but over how much to spend. The Legislative Yuan approved $24 billion in purchases — including a defense package passed by Congress in December and the pending arms sale — falling short of Taipei’s $40-billion proposal.

Anticipation for the president’s state visit is high here in the capital city, where local news is filled with questions over the influence Trump’s war in Iran might have on his appetite for supporting Taiwan.

Chinese defense analysts have seen the war as a sign of U.S. weakness. But Taiwanese defense experts have taken away a different lesson: cheap equipment from a lesser military, such as dumb mines thrown in a strait, may just be enough to paralyze a superpower.

The latest U.S. National Security Strategy, released by the Trump administration in December, emphasized the importance of support for Taiwan and the status quo.

But the Taiwanese took note that the strategy also called for an end to forever wars in the Middle East, offering little preview of the president’s sudden strategic pivot on Iran in February, launching a war few saw coming.

What Trump chooses to say in China “might be difficult to predict,” said Jyh-Shyang Sheu, a scholar of Chinese politics and military capabilities based in Taiwan.

But “in Taipei, we are still focusing on the U.S. policy,” he added, “more focusing on what he does instead of what he says.”

Iran’s foreign minister meets his Chinese counterpart one week before President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is holding talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing amid tensions with the United States in the Strait of Hormuz.

Araghchi’s one-day trip on Wednesday comes a week before US President Donald Trump’s scheduled ⁠visit to Beijing for a summit with President Xi Jinping on May 14 and 15.

China’s official Xinhua news agency reported the meeting between Araghchi and Wang had begun, without providing further details.

Araghchi’s visit to Beijing marks the first time he has travelled to China, a close ally of Tehran, since the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28. Araghchi had spoken with Wang by telephone at least three times following the start of the war.

Earlier in Washington, DC, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed hope that Beijing would reiterate to Tehran the need to release its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran effectively closed the strait, through which major oil and gas supplies passed, after the war began, sending prices of fuel and fertiliser skyrocketing and rattling the global economy.

Following a ceasefire in April, the US imposed its own blockade on Iranian ports in a bid to compel Tehran to agree to Washington’s terms in peace talks.

Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu, reporting from Beijing, said two things will be front and centre on the agenda of Araghchi and Wang’s meeting – maintaining the ceasefire and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

“We know that China has been very critical of the US’s naval blockade on Iranian ports, calling it dangerous. But increasingly, Beijing has also been critical of Iran’s decision to continually close that vital chokepoint,” Yu said.

Wang is expected to speak to Araghchi about what kind of support China can continue to offer Iran if it continues to close the strait.

“Iran will need Chinese backing, for example, at the United Nations, to continue to block any action that would put any additional sanctions on Iran because of its closure of the strait,” Yu said.

“Reportedly, the Iranian foreign minister is looking for clarity from Beijing as to what it will put on the table when Xi meets with Trump, and whether Beijing will be making any concessions to Washington that could make Tehran nervous.”

China, in return, “wants its own assurances that Iran won’t act in any escalatory way or any dramatic fashion in the lead up to that very important meeting”, she added.

Araghchi and Wang’s meeting came as Trump announced a pause on a US military operation to escort stranded ships out of the Strait of Hormuz.

The effort, which began on Monday, ratcheted up tensions, with the US military claiming it sank several Iranian boats that attempted to interfere in the operation. The United Arab Emirates also reported coming under missile and drone attacks from Iran, with one assault sparking a fire at an oil refinery. Tehran denies the launching the attacks.

Trump said on Truth Social the pause was based “on the request of Pakistan and other Countries” and because “Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement with Representatives of Iran”.

Pakistan has been leading efforts for a peace deal between Iran and the US.

The two sides held direct talks in Islamabad on April 11 and 12, but the negotiations ended without an agreement. Key sticking points include US demands for Iran to halt all nuclear enrichment and Tehran’s wish to continue to exercise control over the Strait of Hormuz.

The humans were left far behind as smartphone maker Honor’s humanoid robot shattered the men’s world record in China.

A humanoid robot competing against flesh-and-blood runners has broken the world record at a Beijing half-marathon, showcasing the rapid technological advancements achieved by Chinese makers.

Spectators lined the roads in Yizhuang in the capital’s south on Sunday to watch the machines and their human rivals race, each group in a separate lane to avoid accidents or collisions.

Some of the robots were highly agile, moving like famous runners such as Usain Bolt, while others had more basic capabilities.

The winning humanoid, equipped with an autonomous navigation system and running for Chinese smartphone maker Honor, completed the roughly 21km (13-mile) course in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, at an average speed of about 25km/h (15.5mph), according to state broadcaster CCTV.

That was far faster than the top human in Sunday’s race, while also surpassing the current men’s world record of 57:20, held by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo.

The result represented spectacular progress from last year, when robot-runners fell repeatedly, and the best took more than two hours and 40 minutes to finish.

The number of humanoid entries jumped from about 20 last year to more than 100, according to organisers, a sign of the sector’s growing popularity.

‘Pretty cool’

Han Chenyu, a 25-year-old student who watched the race from behind a safety barrier, barely had time to take out her phone and snap a picture of the leading robot as it whizzed past.

She told the AFP news agency she was enthusiastic about such leaps in technology and thought the event was “pretty cool”.

But, she added, “as someone who works for a living, I’m a little worried about it sometimes. I feel like technology is advancing so fast that it might start affecting people’s jobs”, particularly with artificial intelligence (AI) growing increasingly sophisticated.

Humanoid robots have become a common sight in China in recent years, in the media as well as in public spaces.

Xie Lei, 41, who watched Sunday’s race with his family, said robots could “become part of our daily lives” within several years, potentially used for “things like housework, elderly companionship or basic caregiving” or “dangerous jobs, even firefighting”.

The humanoid half-marathon aims to encourage innovation and popularise the technologies used in creating and operating such machines.

In a sign of the industry’s strength, investment in robotics and so-called embodied AI amounted to 73.5 billion yuan ($10.8bn) in China in 2025, according to a study by a government agency.

“For thousands of years, humans have been at the top on planet Earth. But now, look at robots. Just in terms of autonomous navigation, at least in this specific sport event, they’re already starting to surpass us,” Xie said.

“On one hand, it does make you feel a little bit sad for humanity. But at the same time, technology, especially in recent years, has given us so much imagination.”