China rolls out lavish welcome for Trump, but no breakthrough emerges

China answered Donald Trump’s arrival with ceremonial excess: a red carpet at Beijing airport, a People’s Liberation Army band, rows of schoolchildren waving Chinese and American flags, tea with Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan, a Peking opera performance and a state dinner inside the Forbidden City, where no U.S. president had ever been honored that way. The pageantry was unmistakable, but the result was narrower. The two sides left without any sweeping agreement, even after Beijing closed the Palace Museum complex to the public to stage what it billed as a rare “state visit-plus.”

Trump’s three-day visit, from November 8 to 10, 2017, came after Xi’s April 2017 trip to Mar-a-Lago, which Chinese officials pointed to as part of the rationale for the extraordinary welcome. Beijing said it had not used the “state visit-plus” label for any foreign leader since the Communist Party took power in 1949, a signal aimed as much at domestic audiences as at Washington. Xi told Trump the visit was being watched closely in China, the United States and other countries around the world.

Behind closed doors, the White House said Trump and Xi discussed North Korea, U.S.-China relations and economic issues. The two sides committed to continue dialogue on diplomatic, security, economic, law enforcement, cybersecurity and social-cultural issues, and to keep pressing Pyongyang toward full, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Trump arrived with a delegation that included dozens of business leaders, underscoring Beijing’s effort to tie statecraft to commerce, but the visit produced no major breakthrough.

At the Forbidden City, Xi and Peng hosted the Trumps at the Hall of Embodied Treasures, then joined them for an antiques exhibition and a look at items being repaired in the museum conservation workshop. The setting carried its own message: the heart of the old imperial capital was closed to the public, security was tightened, and China showcased Xi’s stature after the Communist Party’s 19th National Congress. The choreography projected a personal working relationship between Xi and Trump, but it also exposed the limits of that bond. Trade and security tensions were already deepening, and even the most lavish welcome could not conceal how much remained unresolved between Beijing and Washington.