Trump's China Trip in Numbers
Eight U.S. presidents have visited China since 1972, but Donald Trump will become only the third to do so on two occasions when he lands in Beijing on Wednesday ahead of meetings with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
Trump was the last American leader to visit China back in 2017, during his first administration. The three-day trip this week follows a gap of over eight years without an official visit, the longest since a nine-year gap between George H.W. Bush's trip in 1989 and Bill Clinton's in 1998.
George W. Bush visited China four times between 2001 and 2008-the most by any sitting U.S. president-and Barack Obama traveled there on three occasions between 2009 and 2016, according to the Office of the Historian at the U.S. State Department.
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US presidential travels to China
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U.S. presidential trips to China stopped after Beijing's Tiananmen Square crackdown in June 1989 and the accidental bombing by U.S. aircraft of China's embassy in Belgrade, capital of the former Yugoslavia, in May 1999. Relations improved after the U.S. backed China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001.
The COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2023 may partially explain why no American leader has visited China since Trump 1.0, but a severe downturn in bilateral relations has also played a major part-the result of heated diplomatic exchanges, a trade war and a fierce military rivalry.
Only Presidents Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden have not visited China since 1972, although they only served single terms. However, Carter did oversee the normalization of relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China in 1979.
State visits are symbolic, and their absence doesn't mean the American and Chinese leadership isn’t talking, over the phone or in person in third countries.
“The upcoming meetings between Presidents Trump and Xi will be all about trying to keep the bilateral relationship stable, at a time when strategic, military, political and economic challenges are testing this proposition,” said Wendy Cutler, a former senior U.S. trade official who is senior vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
“It's important to note that while this will be the first trip by a U.S. president to China since Trump's visit during his first term, he met with Xi last October in South Korea where both leaders agreed to de-escalate and pursue stabilization….Both leaders, for their own reasons, favor de-escalation, but as the past few weeks have shown this is easier said than done,” Cutler told Newsweek.
“In recent weeks, China has implemented restrictive supply chain regulations, disapproved the purchase by Meta of the Chinese AI company Manus, and issued blocking regulations to its oil refineries targeted for sanctions by Washington. Moreover, the Iranian conflict, with little end in sight, is introducing all sorts of challenges to the relationship,” she said.
Trump’s state visit begins in earnest on Thursday morning local time. He is scheduled to meet Xi at 11 a.m. before their summit officially begins at 11:15 a.m., according to an official itinerary released by the White House. In the afternoon, the pair will visit the imperial-era Temple of Heaven before attending a state banquet at 7 p.m.
On Friday, Trump starts the day with “executive time” from 8-9 p.m., sits for a print interview at 11 a.m. and joins Xi for a photo session at 12:40 p.m. before their luncheon at 1:15 p.m. The U.S. delegation and the traveling press pool depart Beijing at 6 p.m.
China’s Foreign Ministry said this week that Trump’s state visit should pave the way for “peaceful coexistence” between the two superpowers, while the White House said the trip was of “tremendous symbolic significance.”
“The steady development of China-U.S. relations brings certainty and stability to the world,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Monday.
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This story was originally published May 12, 2026 at 10:40 AM.