Donald Trump is due to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday evening, the first visit to China by a US president in nearly a decade, as he seeks to mend power and prestige weakened by the war in Iran.
Trump will bring tech leaders, including Elon Musk of Tesla and Tim Cook of Apple, and plans for headline-grabbing deals. He has said he expects China’s leader, Xi Jinping, would “give me a big, fat hug when I get there”.
But the Middle East conflict that Trump started, and seems unable to finish, will cast a long shadow over two days of talks amid fears that he might be tempted to weaken US support for Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by China, in return for Xi’s assistance.
“I don’t think we need any help with Iran,” Trump said to reporters before departing the White House on Tuesday. “We’ll win it one way or the other – peacefully or otherwise.”
He also sought to play down divisions with Beijing, saying Xi had been “relatively good” during the crisis and insisting that Washington had “Iran very much under control”.
The war has entered its third month, with Tehran tightening its grip over the strait of Hormuz and Washington struggling to turn a fragile ceasefire into a lasting settlement.
Behind the scenes, US officials have spent weeks urging China – Iran’s biggest oil customer and one of the few powers with leverage in Tehran – to pressure the Islamic Republic into reopening the strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply ordinarily passes, while accepting US terms for peace.
The US recently sanctioned several Chinese firms accused of assisting Iranian oil shipments and supplying satellite imagery allegedly used in Iranian military operations. China condemned the measures as “illegal unilateral sanctions” and invoked a rarely used blocking statute prohibiting Chinese entities from complying with them.
Chinese officials have publicly called for stability while carefully avoiding overt alignment with Washington. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi last week hosted his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, in Beijing, and defended Iran’s right to develop civilian nuclear energy.
Xi has also offered implicit criticism of the US over the war. He has said safeguarding international rule of law is paramount, adding it “must not be selectively applied or disregarded,” nor should the world be allowed to revert “to the law of the jungle”.
Still, neither side appears eager to allow the Iran crisis to derail broader diplomatic and economic engagement in the first of four potential meetings between Trump and Xi over the next year.
The two countries remain locked in a fragile tariff truce reached last autumn after tensions threatened to erupt into a full-scale trade war. Trump has long complained about China’s trade surplus with the US, while Beijing has bristled at American export controls and sanctions.
White House officials said Trump would travel with a delegation of more than a dozen US business leaders, including Musk and Cook, in a sign that both governments still seek economic cooperation despite strategic rivalry.
A sale of 500 Boeing 737 Max jets, one of the biggest orders in its history, will be announced during the trip, the Bloomberg news agency reported. Trump and Xi will also discuss creating a new board of trade to manage what China should buy from the US and vice versa.
Beijing, too, has reasons to avoid escalation. China’s economy remains burdened by sluggish domestic demand and a prolonged property crisis, while the closure of the strait of Hormuz has exposed its heavy dependence on Middle Eastern energy supplies.
Trump’s trip will be closely scrutinised in Taiwan for any sign of weakening US support. On Monday, he said he would speak to Xi about US arms sales to Taiwan, a departure from historic US insistence that it will not consult Beijing on its support to the island.
He also insisted that his personal relationship with Xi would prevent a Chinese invasion of the island. “I think we’ll be fine,” he said. “I have a very good relationship with President Xi. He knows I don’t want that to happen.”
Another potential focus will be AI, with both countries facing calls to cooperate on global standards and safeguards. Bernie Sanders, an independent US senator, urged Trump and Xi to agree on allowing top scientists to share technical information and develop “AI redlines” about dangerous behaviour.
Sanders said: “At the height of the cold war, Reagan and Gorbachev found a way to negotiate nuclear arms control. The existential risk posed by AI demands nothing less from Trump and Xi.”
In Beijing, security was visibly tightened ahead of the visit, with police stationed at major intersections and checks increased on the metro system.
The summit itinerary includes a formal welcome ceremony, private meetings between the two leaders and a tour of the Temple of Heaven – a religious complex dating to the 15th century symbolising the relationship between Earth and heaven. Trump will attend a state banquet on Thursday evening and then have a tea and working lunch with Xi on Friday before leaving.
The US president, who has been criticised for emphasising foreign policy at the expense of domestic concerns in his second term, will be eager to project strength and present the trip as a victory.
Anna Kelly, the White House principal deputy press secretary, told reporters on a call on Sunday: “President Trump cares about results, not symbols. But even still, the president has a great relationship with President Xi, and the upcoming summit in Beijing will be both symbolically and substantively significant.”
But the US approach is likely to be pragmatic and transactional with little focus on structural reform. Scott Kennedy, senior adviser in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank in Washington, said: “China and Xi Jinping come into this meeting in a much stronger place than the United States.
“China has goals that they would like: to extend the ceasefire, to reduce tech restrictions on the imports of semiconductors and lower tariffs. But even if they don’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.”