US President Donald Trump could visit China as early as next month, according to multiple diplomatic sources, as the American leader has appeared focused on hammering out a deal with Beijing since his return to the White House.
The presidents of both countries would like the other side to visit to present it as a diplomatic triumph, but initial discussions have been around Trump visiting China, according to sources.
It is unclear how far discussions about a potential trip have progressed.
One Chinese source said “it is more difficult for Beijing officials to talk to their counterparts in Washington now than in the Biden administration, as Washington is going through drastic changes”.
Just days before Trump returned to the White House on January 20, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a phone call and spoke on a wide range of issues.
A week later, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke to his US counterpart Marco Rubio, but they have yet to hold any official meeting. Rubio has been sanctioned by Beijing and technically cannot visit China.
A second source said both countries had been discussing a summit between Trump and Xi and were working towards holding it in April, although dates were yet to be finalised.
The source said Trump had clearly expressed hope for Xi to visit his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida where the two leaders previously met in 2017, but that Beijing had hoped for a more formal meeting either in Washington or to invite Trump to China.
“Especially for Xi, if Trump visits China after the ‘two sessions’, it will be an important diplomatic victory,” the source said, referring to China’s biggest annual political gathering which wraps up this week.
An American source said the “earliest for Trump to visit China is April”.
According to earlier reports, Trump told his advisers he wanted to travel to China in his first 100 days in office and a visit in April would fall within that 100-day window.
Any visit would take place as China-US trade frictions continue to mount after Trump doubled tariffs on Chinese goods this month. China then initiated retaliatory measures.
An investigation into China’s trade practices, as ordered earlier by Trump, is expected to conclude by April and its results could form the basis for further trade actions against Beijing.
But Trump, who presents himself as a deal maker, has also signalled his willingness to negotiate with China, saying in February he believed it was “possible” to strike a fresh trade deal with China.
Trump has boasted on multiple occasions since returning to the White House about his “very good personal relationship” with Xi. Last month, he said he expected Xi to visit the US but did not offer a concrete timeline for the visit.
Trump visited China in November 2017 during his first presidency. Beijing rolled out the red carpet and treated him to dinner in the Forbidden City just months before Trump launched a trade war against China. His successor Joe Biden did not visit China during his term as US president.
In 2023, Xi attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in San Francisco and held a summit with Biden on the sidelines of the event. Under Chinese protocol America’s leader should visit China next.
Another American source, who is based in Washington and has knowledge of the situation, told the South China Morning Post that the US leader was expected to visit China in April or May, and that “telling signs” of Trump’s next move on China could emerge “very soon”.
“Now Trump’s team is quiet on China because they have less people – only half compared to his first term. Now they are concentrating on Ukraine as Trump thinks he could finish the Ukraine business soon, and Ukraine is also much less complicated compared to China,” the source said, adding that once the Ukraine issue was resolved all attention “would be turned towards China”.
Groundwork for the two leaders’ summit has been under way with a “quite senior” Chinese delegation reportedly visiting Washington to engage with the Trump administration “a couple of weeks ago”, according to a British source.
The New York Times this month reported that a delegation of officials, including former Chinese ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai, was in Washington to meet representatives of think tanks, with the Chinese floating ideas for a potential trade deal.
But the source, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, suggested that US officials were not sure of Washington’s China policy, and that they “wouldn’t know what to say as [the policy] has not been articulated yet”.
Tensions between China and the United States remain high over a range of issues, including Washington’s trade and tech restrictions, Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Last week, when asked how Beijing would engage with the new Trump administration, Foreign Minister Wang issued a strong warning, saying “no country should fantasise that it can suppress China and maintain good relations with China at the same time”.
“Such two-faced acts are not good for the stability of bilateral relations, or for building mutual trust,” he told a press conference on Friday.
Speaking about Washington’s “suppression” of Beijing, Wang also urged the US to “take an objective and rational view of China’s development, engage proactively with China in practical exchanges, and work together with China to pursue the right way of getting along with each other to the benefit of the two countries and the whole world”.
China’s foreign ministry had not responded to inquiries by the Post about a potential Xi-Trump meeting by the time of publication.
(South China Morning Post)
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