The making of the Xi-Trump summit, the most-anticipated world leader’s meeting of 2017
All eyes on when the state leaders will meet and if it will be a formal White House event or a party by the beach in Florida
When will US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet?
If there’s any meeting between world leaders that’ll be among the most anticipated in 2017, it’s the inevitable meeting between Trump and Xi. Trump, as he seemingly stewards the United States’ decline, has long-emphasised his interest in rethinking the US relationship with China.
After Trump’s inauguration, Sino-US ties were at first slow-moving. Even as Trump racked up headlines over phone calls with numerous foreign leaders – friendly and adversarial alike – and hosted close US allies in Washington, there was little on the US-China front.
This wasn’t entirely surprising. Trump’s unprecedented decision in early December 2016, during the US presidential transition, to accept a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s Beijing-sceptic President Tsai Ing-wen cast a pall over Chinese expectations for the bilateral relationship once Trump took office. China considers Taiwan a part of its sovereign territory and relations between Beijing and Taipei declined sharply after Tsai’s May 2016 inauguration.
After multiple weeks of uncertainty and near-silence on the bilateral relationship at the highest levels of government on both sides, Trump and Xi broke the ice formally with their first presidential phone call on February 10. The two leaders had spoken days after Trump’s election win in November, before Trump’s call with Tsai as well.
