Before leaving Beijing, Trump’s team threw away all the items they had received from the Chinese side
White House staff collected and discarded all items that Chinese officials had handed to the US delegation before boarding the presidential aircraft at Beijing Airport, according to Turkiye.today. These included passes, temporary mobile phones and delegation badges.
Emily Goodin, the New York Post’s White House correspondent, wrote on social media platform X that US staff had collected everything the Chinese side had issued to the delegation before boarding the plane.
“US staff took everything that the Chinese officials had handed out: passes, temporary phones for White House staff, and delegation badges. Before boarding the presidential plane, all of this was collected and thrown into a bin near the steps. Nothing from China was allowed on board. We’re flying to America shortly,” she wrote.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived to see Donald Trump off to the plane. Near the steps, schoolchildren dressed in the colours of the US presidential plane waved American and Chinese flags and shouted: “Goodbye! Have a safe journey!”
At the top of the steps, Trump raised his fist, waved his hand and boarded the plane without making any further statements.
Donald Trump’s three-day visit to China was the first visit by a sitting US president to the country in the last nine years and the first for Trump himself since his state visit in 2017.
During the trip, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping held around two hours of talks in the Great Hall of the People, visited the Temple of Heaven and attended a banquet. Afterwards, they strolled through the Zhongnanhai compound and held a working tea meeting and lunch at the Zhongnanhai compound.
Xi Jinping described the visit as “historic and landmark” and stated that the two sides had agreed on a “new vision for building constructive Sino-US relations of strategic stability”.
According to Xi Jinping, Donald Trump’s visit “contributes to strengthening mutual understanding, deepening mutual trust and improving the well-being of the peoples of both countries”.
After the talks, Donald Trump said: “It was an incredible visit. I think it has brought a lot of good.”
He also described Xi Jinping as “a man I respect very much” and said that neither side wants Iran to have nuclear weapons.
“We want the straits to remain open. We want this to end, because crazy things are happening there,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the summit ended without major breakthroughs on trade issues and without any concrete commitments from China to help end the war with Iran.
During the visit, no official decision was reached regarding China’s export controls on rare-earth metals. There were also no announcements of specific agreements in the fields of agriculture, beef or aviation.
The South China Morning Post reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin may visit China on 20 May. The publication cites its own sources, though neither Beijing nor Moscow has officially confirmed these dates.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that preparations for the visit “have already been completed; only the finishing touches remain”.
