Trump tells Xi US-China relationship will be ‘better than ever’ as talks in Beijing begin
The two leaders met in the Great Hall of the People off Tiananmen Square on Thursday morning
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[BEIJING] Donald Trump said China and the US will have a “fantastic future” in a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, kicking off the first visit by a sitting US president to Beijing in nearly a decade.
The two leaders met in the Great Hall of the People off Tiananmen Square on Thursday morning (May 14) after a welcome ceremony featuring honor guards and carefully choreographed pageantry.
“The relationship between China and the USA is going to be better than ever before,” Trump said in his opening remarks.
Walking together, Xi and Trump stopped to greet top Chinese officials, starting with Cai Qi, Xi’s chief of staff, followed by the US delegation, which included US Ambassador to China, David Perdue, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. Top executives from US companies were also present, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Tesla’s Elon Musk.
China’s blue-chip stocks eased 1% after hitting their highest level since late 2021 at the start of the session, while the yuan rose to a three-year high against the dollar as traders watched the headlines from the Trump-Xi meeting. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.3%, hovering near the record-high hit last week.
Relations between Washington and Beijing have stabilised since the two met in October 2025 in Busan, South Korea. But tensions have remained, with the US-Israeli war against Iran representing the latest flash point.
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Discord also persists over China’s dominance over the supply of rare earths and American export controls that limit the ability of Chinese companies to access cutting-edge chips.
Ahead of the meeting, Rubio said the relationship with China was “both our top political challenge, geopolitically, and it’s also the most important relationship for us to manage.”
“It’s a big, powerful country. It’s going to continue to grow, but we’re going to have interests of ours that are going to be in conflict with interests of theirs,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News taped aboard Air Force One and airing shortly ahead of the meeting.
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While specific outcomes from the discussions likely will not become clear until the summit concludes, topics on the agenda are expected to include trade, tariffs, Taiwan and Iran. Trump, who included a group of US corporate executives including Musk and Huang in his delegation, said his first priority would be asking Xi to roll back trade barriers.
“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,” the US leader wrote in a social media post.
The US and China are weighing a potential framework whereby each country identifies some US$30 billion in goods on which tariffs could be eased without threatening national security interests, Reuters reported, citing four unnamed people familiar with the Trump administration’s objectives. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
Rubio also indicated in the Fox News interview that the US would push China to help conclude the war in Iran, as negotiations on a peace deal continue to bedevil the White House.
“We hope to convince them to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away from what they’re doing now in the Persian Gulf,” Rubio said, adding he believed it was in China’s “interest to resolve this” due to Asia’s heavy energy dependence on the region, the possibility Chinese ships could continue to be targeted, and the risk that the conflict could further weigh on the global economy.
The two leaders have met at least six times over the past decade – typically on the sidelines of major multilateral summits – although they have also visited each other’s nations.
While in Beijing, Trump will take part in a state banquet with Xi Thursday evening. On Friday, he will meet with the Chinese leader again for a photo session, followed by a tea gathering and then lunch, before departing from Beijing in the afternoon
Business interests
US CEOs including Nvidia’s Huang, Apple’s Cook accompanied Trump on this trip. One of the key voices in those conversations will be Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who joined the trip at the last minute. His focus will be on AI chips - a major sticking point in US-China ties. Nvidia has been pushing to expand sales in China, but while Washington has granted some export licenses, Chinese customers have so far been unable to complete purchases. That’s left orders for its most advanced chips in limbo. What happens next for Nvidia is one of the most closely watched aspects of this trip.
There’s a parallel track of dealmaking and networking happening around this trip as well. The US business delegation traveling with Trump spans sectors from tech and finance to aviation and agriculture. BLOOMBERG, REUTERS
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