US President-elect Donald Trump has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping and other foreign leaders to attend his inauguration next month in Washington, but experts said Xi is unlikely to attend, a spokesman for US President Donald Trump’s transition team said on Thursday.
Asked if Xi had responded, Carolyn Leavitt told Fox News in an interview that “that will be determined.” It did not mention the names of other world leaders who were also invited.
“This is an example of President Trump creating an open dialogue with leaders of countries that are not only our allies, but our adversaries and competitors as well,” Levitt added.
It would be unprecedented for a Chinese leader, the United States’ biggest geopolitical rival, to attend the inauguration of a US president, and Chinese experts said it was highly unlikely that Xi would come to Washington.
This is a diplomatic play, nothing more. Scott Kennedy, a China affairs specialist at the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that other heads of state, let alone Xi Jinping, did not attend the US president’s inauguration.
Speaking to CNBC in New York on Thursday, Trump said his administration would have “a lot of conversations with China.”
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“We have a good relationship with China. I have a surprising relationship. Now, when the coronavirus came, I kind of cut it off. That was a step too far.”
“But we have talked and discussed with President Xi, some things, and others, and with other world leaders, and I think we will do a very good job all around.”
The Kremlin said separately on Thursday that it had not received an invitation to the inauguration ceremony on January 20.
The offer for Xi to attend Trump’s swearing-in in early November was extended, shortly after the November 5 presidential election, according to CBS News, which first reported the invitation on Wednesday.
Hungary’s far-right leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has a warm relationship with Trump and visited him in Florida this week, is “still considering” attending, CBS said.
The Chinese embassy did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Tensions over trade and Taiwan
Trump has appointed several China hawks to key positions in his incoming administration, including Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state.
Trump also said he would impose an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods unless Beijing does more to stop the trafficking of the addictive narcotic fentanyl. He threatened to impose tariffs of more than 60% on Chinese goods during his election campaign.
In late November, Chinese state media warned Trump that his threat to impose tariffs could drag the world’s two largest economies into a mutually destructive tariff war.
On Wednesday, China’s ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, read a message from Xi during a US-China Business Council gala in Washington, in which the Chinese leader said Beijing was ready to stay in touch with the United States.
“We should choose dialogue rather than confrontation, and win-win cooperation rather than zero-sum games,” Xi said in the letter.
Other China experts said China could respond to Trump’s invitation by offering to send a lower-level official, but would likely demand that self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, not be invited.
Taiwan, which is not officially recognized by the United States, would likely feel uncomfortable about Trump’s invitation to President Xi, said Bonnie Glaser, a Taiwan expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Trump’s election victory raised hope in Taiwan that he would take a tough line on China, but it also raised concern given his comments that the island should pay the United States for its defense.
Five sources told Reuters that two senior members of Taiwan’s government visited the United States this week to meet with people connected to Trump’s transition team.
