Name: China Said to Be Irked by Xi-Trump Summit Planning
Uploaded: 2026-03-12T21:34:14.000Z
Duration: 4 min 12 s
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Chinese officials are expressing frustration over what they see as insufficient U.S.

preparation for president Trump's upcoming visit at the end of the month.

Our chief North Asia correspondent, Stephen Engle joins us now from Beijing.

Steve, it does look like they have different styles of preparing for this meeting.

Xi Jinping and Donald Trump and the way they run their administrations are extremely different.

The Chinese like to have everything choreographed, play planned well in advance.

One of the reasons why the National People's Congress, which wraps up tomorrow, it's a annual session of Parliament, they do it once a year because they have the whole rest of the year to plan for it.

Same with state visits, especially one so high profile and so important to both countries that we're going to see in three weeks between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.

Whereas we've all seen in the first term and in the last year, the style of Donald Trump's administration to 2.0 is very different than how the Chinese like to do it.

In fact, we could probably assume that Donald Trump likes and thinks his spontaneity is an advantage, but

that goes against what the host nation really wants.

So we're hearing from sources that the Chinese side, you know, putting floating this out there right now three weeks before Donald Trump arrives, they're concerned that there has not been enough preparation and consultation between the two sides.

Granted, the White House has been quite distracted, to put it quite mildly, with the war in Iran, with the upheaval of the tariff regime by the Supreme Court and other issues.

Maybe China has not been the top priority.

But look back and has Linda 2017, in the first time, in the first term of Donald Trump, when he came to China, he sent Rex Tillerson, his is Secretary of State.

He also sent his commerce Secretary to China in the months before that to sort of lay the groundwork.

There's been a low level team that's been here for a little while, but

we haven't seen those high profile visits and dialogue to set the agenda, set the choreography and set the deliverables.

So it's a wild card for Xi Jinping in just three weeks.

Trump may be distracted, but he says he remains committed to making this trip.

You got to wonder how much of Chinese interests are at stake here at this particular meeting.

And they've doubled down on how, saying how important this summit is going to be.

They didn't cancel after the Trump administration, along with the Israelis bombed Tehran, which I thought they might do because of the close ties between Tehran and Beijing.

But no, in fact, we've heard the opposite.

They want to have a more fundamental relationship with the United States.

They got some of the trade issues resolved at least in a year, year long truce late last year.

So this was an opportunity for the Chinese perhaps to talk about much deeper strategic, even defense related issues, in particular Taiwan.

We're hearing that Xi Jinping wants to hear directly from Xi, from Donald Trump on his Taiwan policy because keep in mind there is a military hardware package ready to be approved and signed by Donald Trump, but

it's on hold right now perhaps until after this summit or maybe Xi Jinping can convince him to not do that arms sales package to Taiwan.

So again, a lot is in the balance right now, but

these are things that would normally have been discussed perhaps in the run up to that.

We are having a meeting this weekend, another trade round, if you will, between the USTR Trade Representative, Jameson Greer, Scott Bessant, the Treasury secretary, and

But it doesn't really set the groundwork for deeper defense and key issues that go beyond the trade relationship.