The U.S. delegation that stood at attention at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday as President Trump and President Xi Jinping kicked off a high-stakes summit in Beijing offered one of the clearest glimpses of what is on the agenda.
At the front of the receiving line were some of Mr. Trump’s most influential cabinet members, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
In a succession of striking scenes, each of the officials, who have at times been unsparing in their criticism of Beijing across a range of economic and military issues, shook Mr. Xi’s hand, in accordance with event protocol.
Mr. Rubio, a fierce China hawk, was sanctioned by Beijing in 2020 over comments he made about human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region. Mr. Bessent has described Beijing as an ”unreliable trade partner.” And Mr. Hegseth has criticized China’s “destabilizing actions” in the South China Sea as an urgent “wake-up call” to the world.
Mr. Xi also shook hands with Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, who has accused China of having “distorted the entire global trading system” through “theft.” Flanking Mr. Miller was James Blair, a deputy chief of staff trusted with guiding the president’s legislative agenda through Congress, who is currently in charge of steering Mr. Trump’s political operation ahead of the midterm elections in November.
Standing behind Mr. Trump’s most senior staff was a phalanx of leaders of industry, many of whom want more access to the Chinese market. Brian Sikes, the chief executive of the agricultural giant Cargill, is seeking to restore purchases of U.S. beef, sorghum and soybeans. Kelly Ortberg, the chief executive at Boeing, is likewise hoping to win a major order from China.
The presence of semiconductor executives — Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Sanjay Mehrotra of Micron and Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm — underscored that Mr. Xi will likely raise the issue of the export controls the United States has put in place to block China’s access to advanced technologies.
The team of Chinese officials who accompanied Mr. Xi to the talks included loyalists whom Mr. Xi has long turned to for support and counsel.
Chief among them was Cai Qi, the director of the office that manages the Communist Party leadership’s affairs, as well as He Lifeng, a vice premier overseeing economic policy. Both have ties to Mr. Xi going back to their earlier careers as local officials in eastern China. Wang Yi was Mr. Xi’s foreign minister for over a decade and returned to that job after his successor fell in scandal.
The lineup of officials also included lesser-known faces whose value for Mr. Xi probably lies in their technical competence and experience, such as Wang Wentao, the minister of commerce.