By CGTN's Nathan King
Later this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting the US for his first face-to-face meeting with US President Donald Trump.
CGTN’s Nathan King looks back at some of the summits and one-on-one encounters between the two nations over the last 45 years.
On February of 1972, Chairman Mao Zedong and President Richard Nixon met, and the Shanghai communique pledged full normalization of diplomatic relations.
In Beijing on February 22, 1972, Chairman Mao Zedong and the US President Richard Nixon met officially./CFP Photo
Both nations quickly opened liaison offices in each other’s capitals. In 1975, US President Gerald Ford visited Beijing.
Four years later in 1979, full diplomatic relations were established, followed by Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping’s wildly successful trip to the US culminating in that famous handshake at the White House with US President Jimmy Carter.
And as the relationship matured, mutual visits continued under US Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush - often both sides managing differences as well as growing ties.
However, it was the meeting in June 2013 between China’s then new President Xi Jinping and US-President Barack Obama that defined the current era of US-China relations. President Xi described his vision of a new model of major power relations based on mutual respect, no conflict, non-confrontation and win-win cooperation.
“The Sunnylands meeting in 2013 really set the stage for the US-China relationship under Obama and between Obama and Xi Jinping really established a personal relationship that they then built on over the course over Obama’s remaining time in office, and I believe Xi Jinping believes that was a valuable template for the relationship and wants to repeat it,” said Bonnie Glaser, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
That meeting led to the historic agreement on cutting carbon emissions - proving what can happen when the world’s top two economies come together.
The fact that President Xi Jinping is meeting US President Donald Trump so soon in his presidency, away from the partisan politics of Washington, in a relaxed setting at Mar-a-Lago may be an encouraging sign for a fruitful conversation.
