On 25 September, Chinese President Xi Jinping and former U.S. President Donald Trump met for the first time in Washington, D.C., amid a flurry of pageantry and symbolic gestures.
The ceremony featured the gift of Chinese pandas – a rare diplomatic token – but the talks moved slowly, and the parties agreed to a two‑month extension of a tariff truce that had been in place since early 2024.
BBC’s China correspondent Laura Bicker reported that while the meeting was a striking visual moment, it did not bring about any major policy shifts for either Beijing or Washington.
Analysts suggest that the encounter was more about signaling stability in U.S.–China relations and testing each other’s resolve, rather than negotiating concrete agreements.
For a full report, see BBC’s live coverage of the event here.
