Trump’s trip to Beijing scheduled for Nov 8

US President Donald Trump is scheduled to embark on his first state visit to China on Nov 8. It is a trip that both Beijing and Washington expect will bear bountiful fruit and lead to new impetus in the development of relations between the world’s two largest economies.

Trump’s itinerary was announced by the White House on Monday. He would be the second US president to make a state visit to China in the first year of his presidency — Trump took office in January — following the November 2009 visit by thenpresident Barack Obama.

“On Nov 8, President Trump will arrive in Beijing, China, for a series of bilateral, commercial and cultural events, including meetings with President Xi Jinping,” said a statement released by the White House.

That would be their third meeting this year. They met at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, in April and in Hamburg, Germany, during the G20 Summit in July.

Scott Kennedy, deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that first, Trump’s visit to Beijing will try to establish a clear framework for the relationship that identifies the core principles that the relationship is based on, and the shared goals that the two countries have, whether it’s dealing with bilateral or multilateral issues.

“Second is going to be trying to find a path for progress in dealing with economic issues,” Kennedy told China Daily, since Trump has wanted to make the economic relations “much fairer”.

Third is security issues. “I think there is going to need to be some sense of progress on how to deal with some of the hot spots in the Asia-Pacific region, most importantly on the Korean Peninsula, which is in the news every day and threatens to become a much wider problem,” he said.

Both countries have agreed to work closely to ensure that the visit is fruitful and will advance US-China relations.

Trump’s China visit will be the third leg of his planned trip to Asia, preceded by stops in Japan and South Korea and followed by visits in Vietnam and the Philippines, according to the White House.

The entire Asia trip is scheduled for Nov 5 to 14.