International relations regularly masquerades as theater. And just about 9 years after his first state discuss with to China, Donald Trump returned to Beijing with a longer solid of characters.
Along the U.S. president on his Might 2026 discuss with used to be a senior delegation of politicians together with his secretary of protection, and a phalanx of commercial leaders and era executives. It used to be a touring show of American political and company energy.
No longer that the web hosting Chinese language had been wanting symbolic gestures themselves. Trump’s first China discuss with in 2017 had already proven how some distance Beijing used to be keen to visit flip international relations into theater. On that instance, Chinese language President Xi Jinping and his spouse Peng Liyuan in my view accompanied Donald and Melania Trump throughout the Forbidden Town, Beijing’s former imperial palace, ingesting tea within the palace partitions and taking in a Peking opera on the Belvedere of Delightful Sounds, a Qing imperial theater constructed for court docket leisure.
So what used to be being conveyed this time round? As a cultural historian of recent China, I took a peek past the reliable statements and business headlines of the Xi-Trump summit and into the photographs, gestures and cultural symbolism on show.
China’s President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump on the Temple of Heaven in Beijing on Might 14, 2026.
Brendan Smialowski/ AFP by way of Getty Photographs
The burden of heaven
The formal choreography started at Beijing’s Nice Corridor of the Folks, the place the 2 leaders exchanged perspectives at the Iran war, the warfare in Ukraine and the Korean Peninsula, amongst different pieces.
However the extra fascinating tale of the discuss with, to me, used to be informed out of doors the assembly room.
After their two-hour bilateral assembly, Trump and Xi paid a cultural discuss with to the Temple of Heaven in Southern Beijing. Constructed within the early fifteenth century, the temple is China’s maximum whole surviving imperial spiritual complicated. For almost 5 centuries, emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties got here right here to worship Heaven and pray for excellent harvests.
Its maximum recognizable construction, the Corridor of Prayer for Excellent Harvests, rises in 3 tiers of blue-glazed tiles above a marble platform, its round shape and red columns translating cosmology into structure. UNESCO inscribed the website as a International Heritage Web site in 1998, spotting it as “a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design.”
When Trump and Xi posed for images, they had been status in a spot lengthy related to cosmic order and the welfare of the folks. To carry a international chief there may be to ask a specific studying of the connection: now not merely as a cut price between states, however as a dating that Beijing hopes to go along with order, abundance and peace.
There used to be additionally a more effective layer to this symbolism. The Temple of Heaven hyperlinks political authority to agricultural abundance. Emperors got here right here to wish now not for summary cohesion however for grain. That made it a pointed surroundings for a discuss with by which American agricultural exports — soybeans, grains and red meat amongst them — had been anticipated to subject.
For Trump, any Chinese language dedication to shop for extra U.S. farm items would have transparent home political worth. For Xi, the surroundings allowed a difficult bargaining factor — farm purchases — to be translated into an older symbolic language of harvest that spoke to each home and global audiences.
Sooner than Trump, Kissinger
Trump used to be now not the primary American statesman to be dropped at the Temple of Heaven.
In July 1971, Henry Kissinger, then nationwide safety adviser to President Richard Nixon, arrived in Beijing on his well-known secret challenge — the back-channel discuss with that helped re-open the door between two international locations that had little direct touch for greater than 20 years. Between nerve-racking negotiations with Chinese language premier Zhou Enlai, Kissinger made time to discuss with the temple.
There, status amid the outdated cypress groves, he used to be stated to were deeply moved via the undying surroundings of the corridor and its environment.
Henry Kissinger accepts meals from Chinese language Premier Zhou Enlai throughout a state dinner party within the Nice Corridor of the Folks in Beijing in 1973.
Bettman/Getty Photographs
The motif of outdated timber and deep time returned on Might 15, when Xi gave Trump a unprecedented stroll via Zhongnanhai, the walled compound that now homes the core of China’s party-state management. Reuters reported {that a} sizzling mic captured Xi drawing Trump’s consideration to the age of the timber round them — some centuries outdated, some stated to be greater than one thousand years outdated. When Trump requested whether or not Xi had taken different presidents on equivalent walks, Xi answered that he had best infrequently.
In combination, the Kissinger anecdote and the Zhongnanhai stroll expose a habitual common sense in Chinese language-American international relations: The us’s fast-moving financial system is invited to take a look at China’s sense of custom. Xi has used this tactic with different leaders, too. When French President Emmanuel Macron visited China in 2023, he attended a guqin efficiency invoking the classical thought of the zhiyin — the uncommon listener who really understands one’s song.
Basketball and roast duck
Trump’s discuss with used to be now not staged best via imperial grandeur, alternatively. It additionally moved right into a extra acquainted sign in: meals, sports activities and pop culture.
The state dinner on Might 14 used to be any other learn about in cautious hospitality. Cooks designed the menu to honor each Chinese language culinary status and American citizens’ — and Trump’s — recognized personal tastes: Peking roast duck, crispy red meat ribs, pan-fried beef bun, tiramisu and fruit and ice cream.
The desk surroundings for U.S. President Donald Trump at a state dinner party with China’s President Xi Jinping on the Nice Corridor of the Folks in Beijing on Might 14, 2026.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
Trump thanked Xi for a “magnificent welcome like none other,” then answered in a language extra recognizably his personal. He spoke now not best of energy politics however of people-to-people ties: Chinese language employees who helped construct The us’s railroads, Chinese language enthusiasm for basketball and blue denims and the sheer presence of Chinese language eating places around the U.S.
The examples had been characteristically Trumpian — easy, bright and simple to take hold of. However they pointed to one thing necessary. U.S.–China members of the family have by no means been made best via presidents, diplomats and reliable communiques. They have got additionally been formed via athletes, musicians, eating place house owners, scholars and vacationers.
The basketball reference used to be particularly resonant. Sports activities have lengthy introduced a softer language for U.S.–China members of the family. In April 2026, simply weeks prior to Trump’s discuss with, China and the U.S. marked the fifty fifth anniversary of ping-pong international relations — the well-known 1971 change by which a “little ball” helped transfer the “big ball” of global politics.
Basketball now performs a equivalent position. For lots of Chinese language fanatics, the NBA is a deeply acquainted global of avid gamers, groups and reminiscences that represents the spirit of The us: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Yao Ming. That reservoir of love has survived even classes of political stress. Trump, in invoking it, used to be drawing on one thing actual.
A 2nd act in america?
The primary lesson of all this symbolism is that, in U.S.–China members of the family, surroundings hasn’t ever been secondary.
Diplomatic theater can’t settle disputes over era or Taiwan, or resolve the way forward for the worldwide order. However it may well form the temper by which rivalries are controlled, and the tales that leaders inform their public about what the connection manner.
And on that entrance, the summit labored on a number of ranges. To the Chinese language target audience, it introduced their leaders as assured and able to managing a nerve-racking dating with the U.S. on China’s personal cultural phrases.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese language President Xi Jinping attend a welcome rite on the Nice Corridor of the Folks on Might 14, 2026, in Beijing, China.
Alex Wong/Getty Photographs
For Trump and the American delegation, it introduced a lesson in Chinese language traditions and tradition that promotes deeper figuring out throughout political divides. And for each societies, the references for meals, sports activities and pop culture created a extra impartial flooring on which connection may just nonetheless be imagined.
From the Nineteen Seventies opening to Trump’s 2017 discuss with to the Forbidden Town, and from the Temple of Heaven photo-op to the stroll amongst outdated timber at Zhongnanhai in 2026, cultural staging stays central to how China gifts itself to The us — and the way The us is invited to consider China. It used to be introduced on Might 15 that Xi pays a state discuss with to the U.S. in September on the invitation of Trump. If that occurs, the theater of international relations will transfer to American soil, and the query might be how Washington chooses to level China in go back.
