BEIJING, CHINA / MENA Newswire / — U.S. President Donald Trump began his visit to China with formal talks with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, opening the first trip to the country by a sitting U.S. president since 2017 and putting trade, Taiwan and wider security issues at the center of the summit. Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday, and Xi received him at the Great Hall of the People before the two leaders moved into meetings that Chinese officials said would cover bilateral ties and broader global issues.
The opening day combined ceremony and negotiations. Xi held a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People, then met Trump for talks that lasted a little more than two hours. Public remarks at the start of the session presented the meeting as a chance to address issues affecting both countries and the wider international environment. Chinese readouts issued afterward said the leaders agreed to work toward a bilateral relationship of constructive strategic stability and to keep high-level engagement moving.
Economic issues featured prominently from the outset. Chinese accounts of the meeting said economic and trade teams from both countries had produced generally balanced and positive outcomes in talks held in South Korea a day earlier, and said Xi and Trump discussed maintaining that momentum. Chinese state broadcaster also said the two sides agreed to expand cooperation in trade and agriculture and exchanged views on the Middle East, Ukraine and the Korean Peninsula. Taiwan also featured in the talks, with Beijing again identifying it as the most sensitive issue in the relationship.
Trade and security agenda
The visit is taking place against continuing friction over tariffs, export controls and access to strategic supply chains, even after both governments stepped back from the sharpest phase of their trade dispute last year. Trump traveled with a delegation of U.S. business executives, and Xi later met American entrepreneurs accompanying the president. Chinese accounts of that meeting said the executives told Xi they valued the Chinese market and wanted to deepen operations there, while Xi said China would continue opening to mutually beneficial cooperation.
Two official channels framed the trip in similar terms before the summit opened. The White House posted videos of Trump’s arrival in China on Wednesday and described the trip as a state visit. China’s Foreign Ministry, which had announced the May 13 to May 15 trip earlier this week, said Xi and Trump would hold in-depth exchanges on major issues concerning China-U.S. relations and world peace and development. The ministry also said the visit was the first by a U.S. president to China in almost nine years.
Ceremony and direct engagement
After the talks at the Great Hall, the two leaders visited the Temple of Heaven, adding a ceremonial element to a day centered on formal diplomacy and economic matters. Official images and summaries from Beijing emphasized protocol, direct leader-to-leader contact and the presence of senior American business figures alongside the president. Those details reinforced the commercial dimension of the trip, which has been closely tied to efforts to preserve trade channels and manage disputes over market access, technology restrictions and industrial supply chains.
Thursday’s official statements focused on trade progress, sectoral cooperation and the handling of contentious issues, especially Taiwan, while presenting the meeting as a renewed round of top-level contact between Washington and Beijing. With Trump and Xi together in Beijing for the first U.S. presidential visit to China since 2017, the opening stage of the trip centered on confirmed areas of cooperation and disagreement between the world’s two largest economies, without straying beyond the issues both governments placed on the record.