Donald Trump staged a lavish White House welcome for Xi Jinping on Thursday, complete with the pageantry the Chinese leader could have wished for.
Military bands played, troops saluted, jets flew overhead and Trump personally guided Xi through the White House’s gold-trimmed corridors.
Trump smiled as Xi revealed that two giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, would arrive at Zoo Atlanta within days. Their appearance continues a tradition that began when Beijing sent pandas to Washington following Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit.
Yet the ceremony could not conceal the deep rivalry between the world’s two largest economies and military powers, with artificial intelligence emerging as the latest battleground.
“Whoever wins AI, you have to remember this. And now I say, whoever wins SI, whoever wins superintelligence, wins,” Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, two days before Xi arrived.
“And we’re leading now over China by a lot and everyone else,” he added.
Xi challenged that zero-sum view in his opening remarks at the White House on Thursday, shortly before beginning talks with Trump.
“We do not need to avoid mentioning competition, but our competition should be a healthy one and should be kept within bounds. It should be a race of catching up with one another, not a wrestle in which either wins or loses,” Xi said.
Donald Trump, first lady Melania and Chinese President Xi Jinping watch a military demonstration from a White House balcony
Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, during a state arrival ceremony on the White House South Lawn
Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk back to the White House after viewing Marine One
Xi and Trump walk along the White House colonnade to watch a military review
Military jets fly overhead as Xi and Trump watch troops in the White House Rose Garden
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in the White House Oval Office
Trump, Melania, Xi and China’s first lady Peng Liyuan watch a military review in the Rose Garden
JD Vance, second lady Usha Vance and Trump’s daughter Ivanka
The Chinese leader said the United States and China should avoid the “Thucydides Trap,” the theory that an established power and a rising rival are likely to come into conflict.
Xi has used the phrase before. It refers to the Peloponnesian War, portraying rising Athens as China and fearful Sparta as the United States.
Xi said that, as the world’s leading AI powers, both countries had the “capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good.”
“We should coexist in peace. As I have said many times, China and the United States, as two major countries, stand to gain from cooperation and will both lose in confrontation,” Xi said.
He invoked Chinese and American troops fighting side by side against fascism in World War II.
‘Chinese people have never forgotten that part of history, nor have the American people,’ Xi said.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand.
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‘Let us meet the people’s expectation and show our historical initiative.
‘Let us keep advancing the cause of friendship between our two peoples and work together to build a better world.’
Trump and Xi step off the president’s Marine One helicopter sitting on a new helipad
Trump gives Xi a tour of his new helipad
A military band plays for the president in the Rose Garden
Trump gives Xi a tour of his new helipad on the South Lawn
Troops perform a ceremonial drill in the Rose Garden
The US and Chinese leaders with their wives watching the military display
Troops perform a ceremonial drill in front of Trump adn Xi
Trump shows Xi his new helipad
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping speak before boarding Marine One
First lady of China Peng Liyuan (3rd-L) and U.S. first lady Melania Trump (2nd-R) receive a tour of the Smithsonian’s National Museum Of Asian Art from Director of Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art Chase Robinson (C)
Melania Trump and China’s first lady Peng Liyuan during a visit to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art
Beijing, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, has resisted months of pressure from Washington to lean on Tehran to end the almost seven-month war.
Xi wants Washington to halt arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island off China’s southeast coast which Beijing claims as its own.
The AI race has made Taiwan an even bigger prize: the island makes around 90 percent of the world’s most advanced chips.
The one-year trade truce due to lapse on November 10 will be pushed back to January 10, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday, although Beijing did not immediately confirm it.
Trump will host Xi at a black-tie state dinner in the East Room on Thursday night, having complained that his new White House ballroom would not be finished in time.
Melania, who led the preparations, said the room’s decor ‘draws on the color red’s longstanding cultural significance throughout Chinese history.’
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg are on the guest list, all of them pouring billions into AI.
The red-carpet treatment has drawn fire from Trump ally Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.
‘Quite frankly, had the White House asked me for advice, I would have suggested the president not invite Xi Jinping to Washington for such a lavish welcome here in the United States of America based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party,’ Wicker said in a Senate floor speech Tuesday.
The pair could meet up to four times this year, Bessent said, with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen in November and the G20 at Trump’s own Doral golf resort near Miami in December still to come.