Foreign & Public Diplomacy

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

This week, we’re previewing the highly anticipated summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

This week, we’re previewing the highly anticipated summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Trump Travels to China for Xi Summit

U.S. President Donald Trump is set to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday for a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, marking the first visit to China by a sitting U.S. president since 2017 (during Trump’s first term).

It is tempting to assign historic significance to meetings such as these, in part because of the enduring memory of former President Richard Nixon’s transformative trip to China in 1972. In reality, U.S. presidents meet their Chinese counterparts with some regularity, and the consequences are usually routine. Even so, the current gap between visits is unusually long.

Former President Joe Biden didn’t travel to China during his term thanks to the collapse in bilateral relations following the COVID-19 pandemic. This will be Trump’s second official visit to Beijing, putting him broadly in line with his predecessors: Barack Obama made three trips while in office, George W. Bush visited four times, and Bill Clinton went once.

Xi has formally visited the United States four times in his 13 years in power, though he has met with U.S. presidents many times on the sidelines of other events.

But these summits are still opportunities, whichever side of the Pacific they’re on. In 2015, for instance, Obama and Xi agreed to a key cybersecurity deal during a state visit in........

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