It could take months for agreement on a meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, as Chinese officials seek a scripted encounter.
In Washington, President Trump has said he is willing to meet with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader.
In Beijing, Chinese officials and experts agree that a meeting between the heads of state must precede any broad reset of relations with the United States amid Mr. Trump’s aggressive approach to trade and foreign policy.
But arranging a meeting is already proving slow and difficult.
Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, who came to Beijing this month as an informal representative of Mr. Trump, said one of the main goals for his trip was to lay the groundwork for a presidential summit. After meeting China’s vice premier for economic policy, He Lifeng, Mr. Daines said in an interview that he believed a summit would be held by the end of the year — a slower pace than many in Washington had expected.
On the Chinese side, Communist Party officials and government advisers said in interviews over the past week that they were taken aback by Mr. Trump’s rapid-fire moves on tariffs, Greenland, Ukraine and other issues. They have been startled by his hostile treatment in public of foreign leaders like President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. As a result, they are cautious about scheduling a summit.
Tensions between Beijing and Washington could worsen this week, when a new set of Mr. Trump’s tariffs is set to take effect in a potentially broad limit on trade.
Chinese officials are reluctant to schedule a summit until the two sides have negotiated details in advance, including a deal between the two countries that would endure for the rest of Mr. Trump’s term. The Trump administration has not yet specified what an acceptable deal might be.
“The Chinese side believes the Trump administration has not really figured out what is the way to deal with China and make a deal,” Wu Xinbo, the dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said on Friday.