China welcomes Trump with pageantry as Xi meeting tests ties

China greeted Donald Trump with choreographed pageantry on Thursday, putting marching troops, a military guard of honor and schoolchildren waving U.S. and Chinese flags at the center of a welcome that signaled control as much as courtesy. The ceremony at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People preceded a closed-door meeting with Xi Jinping that lasted about two hours and 15 minutes, a tightly managed encounter for Trump’s first U.S. presidential visit to China since 2017.

The symbolism was impossible to miss. Trump, on a two-day state trip scheduled for May 14 and May 15, was ushered through a display built to project hierarchy, discipline and negotiating leverage before the substance of the talks had even begun. The official itinerary also included a visit to the Temple of Heaven and a state banquet hosted by Xi in Trump’s honor, adding to the sense that Beijing was using ceremony to frame the relationship on Chinese terms.

The agenda was broad and economically loaded. Trade and tariffs sat at the center, alongside Taiwan, rare-earth exports, technology competition and the war in Iran, all issues that touch the balance of power between the world’s two largest economies. Trump has made the trip his most high-profile foreign visit of his second term so far, underscoring how much weight both governments are attaching to a meeting that could shape markets, supply chains and diplomatic alignments well beyond Beijing.

Xi used the opening of the summit to press two messages at once. He told Trump that trade talks were making progress, while warning that disagreement over Taiwan could send relations down a dangerous path. That warning was the clearest sign that Beijing intends to keep Taiwan at the center of its bargaining strategy, not as a side issue but as a test of U.S. restraint and Chinese red lines.

Trump, for his part, publicly praised Xi as a great leader and stressed the importance of the relationship, a familiar tone from a president who has often cast personal diplomacy as the route to strategic deals. But the ceremony suggested Beijing was less interested in warmth than in leverage. By surrounding the meeting with children, flags and military precision, Chinese officials sent a message to Trump, to domestic audiences and to U.S. allies: China wanted the world to see order, confidence and control before any deal-making began. Major breakthroughs remained uncertain, but the staging made clear that the politics of spectacle were part of the negotiation.