Donald Trump is scheduled to be standing at the bottom of the stairs when Xi Jinping’s plane lands at Joint Base Andrews this afternoon, a courtesy Xi did not return when Air Force One landed in Beijing in May.
- Xi’s aircraft is due at Andrews around 4 p.m. Eastern, the start of a three-day state visit and his first to the White House in more than a decade.
- The Associated Press called it a rare planeside welcome. American presidents normally wait at the White House.
- On May 13, Trump was met at Beijing Capital International Airport by Vice President Han Zheng. Xi first shook his hand the next morning, at the Great Hall of the People.
Most coverage has settled on “not a perfect mirror.” That undersells it. Beijing picked Trump’s greeter the way it picks everything in protocol, by rank, and the rank it picked carries a title without the power. Washington is answering with the one person who outranks everyone.
The Man at the Bottom of the Stairs
Han Zheng is a real vice president with a mostly ceremonial job. The New York Times noted in May that he stepped down from the Politburo Standing Committee and now has little influence over policy. Beijing also sent him to Trump’s inauguration.
The same report made the obvious point. The title impresses a status-conscious American president. The seat at the table stays empty.
Some analysts read Han as an upgrade on 2017. Others called it a slight downgrade. Both are right, and that is the design.
China’s Tarmac Ladder
China does not improvise an airport greeting. It chooses where each visitor sits on a scale.
| Visitor | Arrival | Met on the tarmac by | Actual standing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vladimir Putin | Beijing, 2024 | State Councilor Shen Yiqin | Below vice president |
| Donald Trump | Beijing, 2017 | Yang Jiechi | Top diplomat, Politburo member |
| Donald Trump | Beijing, May 2026 | Vice President Han Zheng | Senior title, out of the Standing Committee |
| Xi Jinping | Andrews, Sept. 2026 | President Donald Trump | Head of state |
Look at the bottom row, then at the three above it. China put nobody at its top on its own tarmac. The United States is putting its top on ours.
What Trump Actually Got in May
To be fair to Beijing, Trump was hardly left on the runway. There was a long red carpet, a military band, an honor guard and about 300 young people waving both flags. The White House posted the arrival itself.
The pageantry was lavish. The head of state was elsewhere. We read the summit that followed as Xi downgrading Trump: he came for a trade win and got a lecture on Taiwan.
Rare for Washington
The South China Morning Post reported that the president almost never meets visiting heads of state at the airfield. The last memorable exception was August 2025, when Trump met Vladimir Putin on the tarmac in Alaska and gave him a ride in the presidential limousine. That summit produced no ceasefire in Ukraine.
Not everyone in his party is comfortable. Senator Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Armed Services Committee, called Xi a brutal, unelected dictator and questioned the lavish welcome.
Our Read
Protocol is a language, and Beijing speaks it fluently. Trump is speaking it badly.
A head of state who walks out to a plane for a counterpart who would not walk out for him is conceding the hierarchy before the talks begin. It costs Xi nothing to accept. It will look very good on Chinese state television. And it comes before any deliverable on tariffs, AI chips, Iran or Taiwan is on paper.
Courtesy is not the problem. Reciprocity is how diplomacy keeps score. If Trump wanted a grand gesture, the place for it was Thursday’s White House ceremony, the same stage Xi used for him in May. Giving it away at the airport tells Beijing what it already suspected: this president values the picture more than the terms.
What to Watch Friday
Xi leaves from the same base on Friday after tea at the White House and a stop at the National Archives. Expectations for a breakthrough are low. The useful question is simple. Who walks him to the plane?