US President Donald Trump will roll out the red carpet for Xi Jinping on Wednesday, giving the Chinese leader a rare personal welcome at the airport for a state visit that is expected to cover everything from AI and trade to Iran.
Trump is laying on extraordinary levels of pomp for Xi's first state visit to the White House in over a decade, including a lavish state banquet, military flyover and 21-gun salute.
The spectacle underscores Trump's desire to maintain a fragile diplomatic and trade truce between the rival superpowers -- although no breakthroughs are expected on any of the key issues.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Xi "left Beijing by special plane" Wednesday, accompanied by his wife Peng Liyuan, his right-hand man Cai Qi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, among others.
In a highly unusual move for a US president, Trump and his wife Melania will travel to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland near Washington to personally welcome Xi on the tarmac at 6 pm (2200 GMT).
Tellingly, Xi did not afford Trump the same courtesy for the US president's state visit to Beijing in May. Instead, Trump was greeted at the airport by China's vice president.
Trump will hold a formal welcome ceremony for Xi at the White House on Thursday including a flyover of F-22 fighters and a B-2 bomber, followed by talks in the Oval Office and a state dinner.
Xi's visit will wrap up on Friday morning when the two presidential couples will have tea at the White House and then visit the National Archives, home to the US Declaration of Independence.
When the two leaders sit down for their highly anticipated talks, they will be confronting a host of thorny issues led by rising fears that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity.
But with China and the United States racing for AI supremacy there are few expectations of any deal to regulate the rapidly advancing technology.
Preliminary talks on Sunday between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his Chinese counterpart He Lifeng discussed creating a communication channel for AI concerns.
The two men held further "substantive" talks on Wednesday to prepare for Xi's visit, Bessent said in a statement.
The simmering trade war between the world's two biggest economies will also loom large, with both sides looking at prolonging a tariff truce agreed when Trump and Xi met in South Korea last year.
Jonathan Czin of the Brookings Institution told AFP that expectations were low for any concrete results from the meeting but "I think there will be some extension of the gentleman's agreement."
Analysts said that China had meanwhile begun to look past Trump, whose second term ends in early 2029, and was in many ways playing for time and using the truce to consolidate its position.
Trump's five-star welcome for Xi has drawn criticism from China hawks within his own party, especially amid reports that Beijing supplied Iran with intelligence for attacks on US troops.
"Our commander-in-chief should keep in mind that his guest is a brutal, unelected and oppressive dictator," said Republican Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee.
Trump however has played down the need to bring up the allegations of Chinese help for Iran, justifying it on the grounds that both Beijing and Washington spy on each other.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Taylor Rogers said Wicker was "wrong," telling US broadcaster Spectrum News: "The president is doing what is best for our national interests here."
For Trump, Xi's visit is also a chance to focus on pageantry instead of problems at home, where the Iran war's effect on fuel prices has sent his approval rating plummeting to historic lows ahead of midterm elections in November.
American presidents very rarely travel to the airport to greet foreign leaders, although Trump welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin planeside in Alaska last year.
The last such welcomes at Andrews -- apart from papal visits -- are believed to be John F. Kennedy's welcome for British prime minister Harold Macmillan in 1962, and Dwight D. Eisenhower's for Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1959.
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