Chinese President Xi Jinping is not expected to travel to Washington next month as an inauguration guest of President-elect Donald Trump, according to two sources familiar with the planning. CBS News was first to report that Trump had personally invited Xi to the swearing-in ceremony shortly after Election Day.
China’s ambassador to the U.S. and his spouse are expected to attend the Jan. 20 event, as is standard practice. Sources told CBS News that additional officials from Beijing may join them.
Inauguration officials have designated staff to handle diplomatic protocol at the festivities, CBS News has learned.
The Chinese embassy in Washington declined to comment. The Trump transition did not reply to a request for comment.
Asked Thursday morning whether Xi had RSVP’d, incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News she didn’t know, but she confirmed other world leaders had been invited.
“We have a good relationship with China. I have a good relationship,” Trump told CNBC this morning. “We’ve been talking and discussing with President Xi some things.” He declined to go into detail and was not asked specifically about Xi and the inauguration.
The invitation to Xi, which was conveyed outside of formal diplomatic channels, took both Beijing and U.S. allies by surprise. Chinese officials who are accustomed to strict protocol and keenly aware of power dynamics in the US-China relationship were left wondering about Mr Trump’s intent.
A head of state has not attended the American inauguration, according to State Department records that date back to 1874.
The invitation comes at an already tense time in the U.S.-China relationship. The U.S. intelligence community recently disclosed a far-reaching hack of eight U.S. telecom companies, assessing that Chinese actors had accessed the metadata of potentially millions of Americans, including high-ranking officials like Vice President-elect JD Vance.
Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and now Trump’s pick to be secretary of state, described the breach on CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” as “an egregious, outrageous and dangerous breach of our telecommunications systems across multiple companies. I’ll leave it at that.”
Several Western diplomats marveled at the decision to invite Xi, given the diverse views on China among Trump team members. It could be a source of tension both within the administration and in the geopolitical relationship, the officials said.