Today's Edition
WASHINGTON (REUTERS)
US President Donald Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House on Thursday for a lavish state summit, with both leaders keen to showcase stable ties.
It will be the year's second meeting of the leaders of the two biggest economies, but Xi's first visit to Washington in more than a decade.
Trump greeted Xi on arrival on Wednesday evening, the first time a US president has welcomed a foreign leader at Joint Base Andrews in 11 years, when President Barack Obama welcomed Pope Francis in 2015, according to C-SPAN, which tracks presidential events.
In a statement on arrival carried by China's Xinhua news agency, Xi voiced hope for a more stable relationship with the United States, saying Beijing and Washington should be "partners, not rivals" and that the "historical logic of peaceful coexistence" between the two countries had not changed.
The US president aims to reciprocate the grand welcome he received in China in May and impress Xi with a ceremony spanning the White House South Lawn, State Floor and Rose Garden.
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Thursday morning that the two leaders would discuss "super intelligence" - his name for AI - but that he did not expect any substantive policy moves.
"Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is," Trump wrote. "That is China's position also."
The guest list for Thursday's state dinner includes CEOs like Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, Open AI's Sam Altman, Tesla's Elon Musk and Nvidia's Jensen Huang.
