The president Donald Trump landed tonight in Beijing aboard Air Force One, greeted with an official ceremony that included a red carpet, a military honor guard, and young Chinese waving flags, marking the first visit by a U.S. president to China in nearly nine years.
Upon descending from the plane and walking down the red carpet, Trump made his signature fist gesture, directed both at the honor guard of the People's Liberation Army and at the children present with flags, in a moment widely captured by photographers and cameras.
The state visit, which takes place from May 13 to 15, is the second in-person meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping since the Republican's return to the White House, and the first on Chinese soil during this second term.
For this Thursday, the formal welcome ceremony is scheduled to take place in the Grand Hall of the People, where Xi Jinping will descend 39 carpeted steps, his timing calculated to the second to coincide with Trump's arrival, accompanied by a 21-gun salute and ceremonial music.
The agenda also includes a visit to the Temple of Heaven, a UNESCO World Heritage site from the 15th century, and a State banquet in the evening, followed by a working lunch on Friday, May 15, before Trump's return to the United States.
The central focus of the conversations will be trade. Trump himself made this clear last Tuesday: "We will talk to President Xi about many things. I would say, above all, about trade."
The visit comes after more than a year of unprecedented tariff escalation between the two powers, which reached peaks of 145% from Washington and 125% from Beijing in 2025, prior to a truce agreed upon at the Busan Summit in South Korea in October of that year.
As a prelude to the summit, Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met on Tuesday and Wednesday in South Korea for a final round of trade negotiations.
Among Washington's objectives are to increase Chinese purchases of Boeing airplanes, agricultural products, and energy, as well as to ensure the supply of strategic rare earth minerals. Beijing, on its part, seeks to extend the trade truce for one year and obtain guarantees against new tariffs and restrictions on semiconductors.
Both governments are also negotiating the establishment of a "China-U.S. Trade Board" for non-sensitive products, with an initial volume of "tens of billions" of dollars.
The most direct precedent is Trump's visit to China in November 2017, when he was given exceptional honors that included a private tour of the Forbidden City, being the first foreign leader to dine there since the founding of modern China. Analysts like Shi Yinhong from Renmin University anticipate that the pomp in 2026 will be less than that of 2017 due to accumulated tensions, although the Chinese protocol prepared for this visit leaves nothing to chance: according to diplomatic sources quoted by international media, "every second counts."
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