Chinese leader Xi Jinping may not have personally accepted US President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s invitation to his inauguration, but Beijing has taken the rare step of dispatching a top official to join the swearing-in ceremony in Washington. <\/p>\n
Chinese Vice President Han Zheng is expected to attend Monday\u2019s inauguration after meeting incoming US Vice President JD Vance Sunday, in a trip observers say is a significant \u2013 but potentially risky \u2013 goodwill gesture as Beijing looks to avert major friction with Trump and his incoming cabinet of China hawks. <\/p>\n
While Han is the most senior Chinese official to attend a US inauguration, his position of vice president is largely symbolic within China\u2019s political system. True authority lies with the ruling Communist Party\u2019s powerful Politburo Standing Committee, from which Han retired in 2022. <\/p>\n
But sending a high-profile official \u2013 and one who has previously represented Xi at international events including the coronation of Britain\u2019s King Charles III \u2013 signals Beijing\u2019s interest in a reset of fraught relations between the US and China, observers say. <\/p>\n
Han has used the visit to meet with members of the American business community, including Tesla CEO and close Trump associate Elon Musk, according to Chinese state agency Xinhua. <\/p>\n
In his meeting with Musk, Han called on American companies, including Tesla, to promote US-China trade relations, Xinhua reported. Tesla operates its largest manufacturing plant outside the United States in Shanghai. Musk has yet to confirm the meeting. <\/p>\n
Han\u2019s arrival in the US follows a phone call between Xi and Trump Friday, where the Chinese leader congratulated Trump on his reelection and called for a new start in relations. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe both attach great importance to our interactions, both hope for a good start of the China-US relationship during the new US presidency, and are willing to secure greater progress in China-US relations from a new starting point,\u201d Xi told Trump in the call, according to a readout from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. <\/p>\n
Trump confirmed on his social media platform Truth Social that he held a \u201cvery good\u201d phone call with Xi, and that they discussed subjects including trade, fentanyl and Chinese-owned social media app TikTok. <\/p>\n
The incoming US president on Sunday also pledged to delay enforcement of a controversial law, upheld by the Supreme Court last week, that would see the app banned in the US if its China-based parent company Bytedance does not divest it. <\/p>\n
The app \u2013 whose fate is closely tied to tech and national security frictions between the US and China \u2013 went dark for roughly 12 hours over the weekend before restoring service following Trump\u2019s statement. <\/p>\n
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to be seated prominently at the incoming president\u2019s inauguration Monday. <\/p>\n
China\u2019s Han and Vance discussed a \u201crange of topics including fentanyl, balancing trade, and regional stability\u201d in their meeting, the Trump-Vance transition team said in a statement on Sunday. <\/p>\n
In its readout of the meeting, Chinese state media outlet Xinhua said Han stressed that China is willing to work with the United States to \u201cpromote the stable, healthy and sustainable development of China-US relations.\u201d <\/p>\n
Han also acknowledged \u201cdifferences and frictions\u201d over economics and trade, but pointed to the \u201ccommon interests\u201d and \u201cspace for cooperation\u201d between the two countries and called for them strengthen dialogue and consultation, Xinhua reported. <\/p>\n
Han\u2019s attendance at the Trump inauguration comes as Trump has broken with precedent set by recent administrations to invite foreign leaders, including Italy\u2019s right-wing leader Giorgia Meloni and Argentina\u2019s Javier Milei. <\/p>\n
The incoming president\u2019s invitation last month to Xi <\/strong>\u2013 the authoritarian leader of America\u2019s main geopolitical rival \u2013 was an exceptionally rare gesture, particularly as the incoming president campaigned on ratcheting up economic competition with China and placing hefty tariffs on Chinese goods. <\/p>\n Xi would have been highly unlikely to attend Monday\u2019s exercise in the democratic transfer of American power, given both the geopolitical context and the lengthy and detailed preparations that typically precede any travel by the Chinese leader. <\/p>\n Chinese ambassadors to the US have attended recent inaugurations, as is standard for many countries, though China\u2019s Foreign Ministry did not confirm that then-Ambassador Cui Tiankai attended President Joe Biden\u2019s. <\/p>\n US-China relations have frayed in recent years, over myriad issues. Those issues include Beijing\u2019s mounting aggression in the South China Sea and toward the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan, as well as US efforts to limit China\u2019s access to American high tech \u2013 stressors unlikely to change any time soon, regardless of who is in the White House. <\/p>\n But pushing for less fractious relations is in Beijing\u2019s interests, observers say, as it seeks to stabilize its ailing economy and avoid deepening a damaging tech and trade war with its top single-country trade partner. <\/p>\n In a meeting with representatives of the US-China Business Council, the US Chamber of Commerce and other business people on Sunday, Han called the American business community the \u201cbackbone of US-China relations,\u201d according to Xinhua. Han said he hoped that American businesses would \u201ccontinue to invest in China\u201d and play an \u201cactive bridging role\u201d between the two sides, Xinhua reported. <\/p>\n His comments follow what has been a period of trepidation for the American business community about doing business in China, given tensions between the two countries and Beijing\u2019s tightened regulatory scrutiny over foreign access to sensitive information. <\/p>\n Dispatching Han for the inauguration sends a message that \u201cChina takes (Trump\u2019s) invitation seriously and is willing to take the risk,\u201d said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington. <\/p>\n That risk, Yun said, is that Trump slaps tariffs on China just days after entering the White House \u2013 a move that Beijing would see as making it look foolish. <\/p>\n On the campaign trail, Trump threatened levying tariffs of upwards of 60% on Chinese imports to the US. In November, he said that China will face higher tariffs on its goods \u2013 by 10% above any existing tariffs \u2013 citing the role played by Chinese suppliers in America\u2019s drug crisis. <\/p>\n Beijing is not alone in facing such economic threats. A procession of world leaders and their representatives have jostled for meetings in recent months to start building a rapport with Trump, who is known to link foreign policy with personal chemistry. <\/p>\n But even as Beijing faces looming economic frictions and suspicions about its ambitions from within the incoming administration, it\u2019s still likely to see opportunity within Trump\u2019s presidency, observers say. <\/p>\n During the Biden administration, Beijing baulked at US efforts to deepen security coordination with American allies in Asia, as well as the president\u2019s stated support for the US defense of Taiwan, the self-ruling island that Beijing claims. <\/p>\n Now, it sees an opportunity as the incoming Trump administration will come in with its own, distinct priorities for its China policy, according to Suisheng Zhao, director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at the University of Denver. <\/p>\n Trump is expected to focus on economic competition with China rather than on the threat of Beijing to an American-led liberal world order, as the Biden White House did. The incoming president has also in the past expressed an affinity with Xi, calling the Communist Party leader \u201ctough\u201d and \u201csmart.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cTrump likes Xi Jinping, he likes strongmen, strong leaders,\u201d Zhao said. \u201cXi Jinping senses these opportunities, and he is equally eager to reset and to test the water at this time.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chinese leader Xi Jinping may not have personally accepted US President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s invitation to his inauguration, but Beijing has taken the rare step of dispatching a top official to join the swearing-in ceremony in Washington. Chinese Vice President Han Zheng is expected to attend Monday\u2019s inauguration after meeting incoming US Vice President JD Vance <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradinginsightsdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradinginsightsdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradinginsightsdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradinginsightsdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradinginsightsdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradinginsightsdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradinginsightsdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradinginsightsdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradinginsightsdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradinginsightsdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Chance for a reset?<\/h2>\n