China-US Relations: Trade, Korean Peninsula Tensions Dominate Trump’s Visit

The American President and wife arrived in the Chinese capital, Beijing on November 8, 2017.

United States President Donald Trump is China on his first visit since taking up office earlier this year. Trump and wife, Melania, landed in the capital, Beijing, in the afternoon of Wednesday, November 8, 2017 on a three-day trip, which is part of an Asian tour. Qualified by Chinese officials as a “State visit plus,” Trump’s discussions with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, are amongst others focusing on tensions in the Korean Peninsula.

This follows the recent war of words between the US and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK, over the latter’s repeated nuclear weapons tests. The other is the thorny issue of trade imbalance between China and the US, which is in favour of China. It is the third meeting between Xi and Trump following the first at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, USA last April and the second in Hamburg, Germany last July on the sidelines of the G20 summit. President Xi Jinping and wife Peng Liyuan welcomed their American counterparts with an informal afternoon tea in the Forbidden City, the sprawling former imperial palace.

The guests were later treated to a traditional Chinese opera performance. US Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, is also leading a big business delegation to Beijing. Trade between China and the US grew from 2.5 billion US dollars (1,413 billion FCFA) in 1979 to about 520 billion US dollars (294,010 billion FCFA) in 2016, a...