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Key Takeaways

• Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to travel to Washington, D.C. on September 23–25 for his sixth official visit to the United States as China’s leader, but only his second venture to the White House. The outcome of Xi’s meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump will shape two other possible meetings this year, along the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Meeting in Shenzhen in November and the G20 Summit in Florida in December.
• Xi’s September visit to the United States will be short and tightly focused on managing bilateral tensions. Xi’s 2015 state visit combined leader-level diplomacy with extensive business and cultural programming. Bilateral meetings on the sidelines of Xi’s 2023 visit to APEC in San Francisco concentrated on efforts to restore or preserve basic guardrails.
• Commercial engagement has shifted from announcing new areas of cooperation to reinforcing existing business ties. Xi’s earlier visit produced major aviation, cybersecurity, and climate agreements, but the tone of Xi’s 2023 trip was heavily focused on reassuring U.S. businesses and stabilizing the bilateral relationship.
• The choreography of Xi’s travel carries great political weight for Beijing. With the upcoming Fifth Plenum in October, Xi will want optics that reinforce his standing and demonstrate respect from Washington. Summit deliverables will be judged by their ability to project stability and reciprocity, as well as the ability to positively impact U.S.-China relations.
• Key watchpoints for September are the scope of the meeting, the favorability of the optics, and whether the leaders can point to some set of positive deliverables without reopening competitive disputes. After September, additional U.S. competitive actions and Chinese reactions may test whether the leaders can contain bilateral friction and have the summit’s stabilizing message carry through the remainder of the year.

Lessons Learned from Xi’s Past U.S. Visits

President Xi has traveled to the United States five times since assuming China’s top leadership position in 2012. He visited the United States three times during the Obama administration, including a state visit in 2015, but made only brief trips during the first Trump and Biden administrations in 2017 and 2023. Xi’s visits have shifted from broad efforts to build institutional frameworks for cooperation toward tightly managed diplomacy focused on crisis prevention, strategic stability, and limited cooperation.

Xi’s engagement with American business has evolved with the bilateral relationship. His 2015 state visit featured an extensive commercial program, including a Boeing factory tour and a technology industry forum with executives from Apple, Microsoft, and other major U.S. companies. Senior Chinese technology executives accompanied Xi, including Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and the CEOs of Baidu, Tencent, and Lenovo. By 2023, U.S. restrictions on Chinese technology companies and Beijing’s domestic technology sector crackdown had reshaped the commercial environment. Xi’s message to business focused more heavily on encouraging U.S. companies to remain invested in China and support a more stable bilateral relationship.

Key observations from previous Xi visits to the United States include:

• From expanding cooperation to managing competition: Xi’s U.S. visits have become less frequent, shorter, and more constrained by the state of bilateral relations. His 2015 state visit lasted seven days and covered three cities, with extensive commercial programming and two full days of talks with President Barack Obama. By contrast, the 2017 Mar-a-Lago meeting lasted roughly 25 hours and produced a 100-day economic framework that failed to prevent a breakdown in trade relations. When Xi returned to the United States in 2023, his meeting with President Joe Biden was centered on restoring basic guardrails after a period of severe tensions.
• Geopolitical crises have consistently shaped the summit agenda: Each of Xi’s U.S. visits took place against a tense geopolitical backdrop. Disclosures of the Snowden files complicated cybersecurity discussions at the 2013 Sunnylands meeting, while the 2015 visit followed the Office of Personnel Management breach. South China Sea tensions weighed on the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit. Trump’s decision to launch missile strikes against Syria during the 2017 Mar-a-Lago meeting remains an unpleasant reminder to Beijing that even a carefully choreographed summit could be disrupted by external events. The 2023 Biden-Xi meeting followed the balloon incident and the fallout from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 Taiwan visit.
• The scope of commercial deliverables has narrowed: Earlier Xi visits produced agreements spanning climate change, cybersecurity, aviation, investment, financial services, law enforcement, and people-to-people exchanges. The first Trump administration attempted to re-engineer the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) in 2017, but the new Comprehensive Economic Dialogue failed to survive the subsequent escalation in trade tensions. By 2023, deliverables focused more heavily on restoring suspended channels of communications and managing emerging risks such as AI.
• Optics and choreography are top of mind: Beijing places significant weight on the setting, sequencing, and presentation of leader-level diplomacy. Preparations for Xi’s 2023 San Francisco trip featured extensive Chinese requests covering details such as camera angles and seating arrangements. Xi has also repeatedly drawn on personal connections to the United States, including his time in Iowa and references to American culture, to reinforce familiarity with the American public. These details reflect Beijing’s view that the presentation of a summit can itself shape perceptions of the relationship.
• Public opposition is becoming more institutionalized: Reactions to high-level U.S. engagement with China have historically been mixed in the United States. The business community generally welcomes commercial progress, while political opponents of the sitting president and human rights groups use Xi’s visits to advance concerns about China. Established months before Xi’s 2023 visit, the House Select Committee on China publicly criticized the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR) and U.S.-China Business Council (USCBC) for selling tickets to their banquet with Xi, underscoring the growing divisiveness of engagement with Beijing even within the U.S. government.

Implications for the September Summit

• The summit agenda will be narrow: The September summit is likely to focus on preserving bilateral stability and demonstrating implementation of existing commitments, with lower expectations for major deliverables than the May Trump-Xi summit in Beijing. China will prioritize optics that portray Xi as engaging Washington from a position of strength, while Trump will seek announcements that demonstrate tangible economic benefits for his electorate ahead of the November midterm elections.
• Summit optics will serve both global and domestic audiences: Xi has an unusually packed diplomatic calendar in September, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Kyrgyzstan, a state visit to Egypt, and the BRICS summit in India. The compressed two-day U.S. visit suggests Beijing is both limiting security exposure and demonstrating China’s global leadership across bilateral and multilateral platforms. Domestically, the October Fifth Plenum — coming shortly after the summit and ahead of the 2027 Party Congress — will make Xi especially sensitive to optics of political control and reciprocity in Washington.
• Commercial deliverables will be designed to reinforce stability: The historical record shows a progression from large headline packages in 2015 toward more limited mechanisms for managing competition. The September summit is likely to feature the extension of the trade truce, visible follow-through on existing commitments, and incremental progress on the Board of Trade. Structural discussions on China’s economy, broader U.S. market access for Chinese investment, or major changes to U.S. and Chinese technology policy are unlikely.
• Geopolitical issues could crowd out the commercial agenda: Recent geopolitical developments may draw the leaders’ limited attention away from the core economic relationship. Beijing’s primary security objective will be to deter further U.S. arms sales and broader military support for Taiwan. The leaders are also likely to discuss Iran, North Korea, and the Russia-Ukraine war, amid intensified threats of U.S. secondary sanctions related to Iran and Trump’s renewed interest in meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Appendix: History of Xi’s Visits to the United States as President

This report was prepared by Jess Shao.