President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing is an effort to promote stability in relations between the two countries.
The discussions are expected to include trade, technology, and Iran. Analysts say a likely outcome could be maintaining the current tariff truce while seeking assurances from Beijing on exports of rare-earth minerals, which are critical to global manufacturing and technology supply chains.
The meeting comes amid continuing tensions between the United States and China over trade policy, technology competition, and broader geopolitical disputes.
As expected, The Associated Press is covering POTUS’s trip to China this week. https://www.google.com/search?q=ap+goes+to+china&rlz=1C9BKJA_enUS689US6…
The AP reports - Trump intends to raise the idea of the U.S., China and Russia signing a pact that would set limits on the nuclear weapons each nation keeps in its arsenal, according to a senior Trump administration official who briefed reporters ahead of the trip. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.
China has previously been cool to entering such a pact. Beijing’s arsenal, according to Pentagon estimates, exceeds more than 600 operational nuclear warheads and is far from parity with the U.S. and Russia, which each are estimated to have more than 5,000 nuclear warheads.
The last nuclear arms pact, known as the New START treaty, between Russia and the United States expired in February, removing any caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century. As the treaty was set to expire, Trump rejected a call by Russia to extend the two-country deal for another year and called for “a new, improved, and modernized” deal that includes China.
The Pentagon estimates China will have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030.
A half-century earlier, US President Richard Nixon's trip to China in 1972 ended twenty-five years of isolation between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) and resulted in the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1979. The following is file footage of AP President Lou Boccardi and other executives' visit to PRC.
https://archive.org/details/1977_AP_Trip_to_China_Final_Cut
Special thanks to Larry Mendillo, APTN for his editing skills.
