Trump and Xi posed briefly for a photo below the steps of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, part of a vast architectural masterpiece that dates to 1420. Asked about the talks, Trump said they were “great.”
“Great place, incredible. China is beautiful,” he said.
He did not respond to repeated questions about what he and Xi may have said on Taiwan. Like most countries, the U.S. has no formal relations with Taiwan, but it is the island’s biggest international backer and arms supplier.
Trump administration officials have said repeatedly that U.S. policy on Taiwan is not expected to change. The Taiwan government said earlier this week that while it was confident that was the case, it was also preparing for possible “surprises.”
Trump is joined on the trip by a delegation of American CEOs including Elon Musk, whose EV maker Tesla has a production facility in Shanghai.
Others include Apple’s Tim Cook and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, a last-minute addition to the trip who joined the delegation at a refueling stop in Alaska. Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg is also on the trip, with the White House previewing a possible aerospace deal, along with other executives from the finance and agriculture industries.
Trump said ahead of his Wednesday arrival in Beijing that his “very first request” to Xi would be to grant American companies greater access to China, one of the biggest U.S. trading partners.
“They look forward to trade and doing business, and it’s going to be totally reciprocal on our behalf,” Trump said of the CEOs.
The business executives are expected to join Trump and Xi later Thursday for a lavish state banquet. The two leaders will meet again Friday morning before Trump returns to Washington.
In a nod to the historic nature of the summit, ahead of the bilateral talks Xi invoked the Thucydides Trap — a theory that describes the tendency toward conflict when an emerging power threatens an existing power.
“The world has come to a new crossroads,” Xi said in his opening remarks. “Can China and the United States overcome the so-called Thucydides Trap and pioneer a new paradigm of major-country relations?”
The idea was popularized by Harvard professor Graham Allison. Writing in the National Interest this week, he had floated the possibility that Trump could offer a “modest concession” in how the U.S. talks about Taiwan, by saying that it “opposes” Taiwanese independence, rather than the current language that states the U.S. “does not support” it.
