US President Donald Trump once praised “great chemistry” with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a state visit to China in his first term.
This happened in November 2017, when Chinese authorities rolled out the red carpet in .
He was honored with an exceptionally rare private tour of the city, cultural events — including a Peking opera performance — and a welcoming ceremony with hundreds of excited children in front of the Great Hall of the People, the capital’s modern political center.
Trump responded with the same cordiality, thanking Xi profusely on Twitter (before the platform was renamed X).
He also praised Xi during a joint speech, saying his people were “very proud” of him and extolling the “great chemistry between the two of us.”
At the time, the trip was a boon for Beijing, offering Xi the opportunity to demonstrate his position as a world power on equal footing.
Now, however, the scenario is very different.
The years that followed were marked by increasing turbulence in China, characterized by a trade war, the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, a technology race, issues surrounding the autonomous island of Taiwan and heated rhetoric.
Bilateral relations worsened further during Trump’s second term, in part due to retaliatory tariffs.
But while other countries scrambled to strike deals with the U.S. and mitigate the economic damage, China adapted and increased its exports to other countries — a remarkable show of trade resilience that sets a markedly different tone for the meeting between the two countries this time around.
