Trump arrived in Beijing on the evening of May 13. According to the New York Post (NYP), the following morning, he met Xi at the Great Hall of the People, the cavernous ceremonial building the Party uses for state receptions. Chinese state television broadcast footage of the two leaders walking a red carpet and shaking hands for approximately 14 seconds. What the broadcast also captured told a different story.
As Xi moved down the line of American officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio received his outstretched hand with a visibly stiff expression. Xi turned to look at Rubio twice. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s response was colder still: he held Xi’s gaze without softening his expression at all. Neither man offered the diplomatic warmth the Party’s choreography demanded.
Chinese security forces detained the American press pool in Beijing
The confrontations did not stop at the welcoming line.
That afternoon, Xi accompanied Trump on a visit to the Temple of Heaven, a 15th-century imperial complex in central Beijing. The NYP reported that Chinese security personnel blocked the American press pool from following the presidential motorcade, herded the journalists into a room, and posted two guards at the door. The detention lasted roughly 30 minutes.
Video captured by American media personality Eric Daugherty and circulated on X showed the scene descending into chaos as Trump and Xi entered the hall for their formal meeting. An open microphone picked up someone shouting, in English: “Get the f*ck out of here!” The footage, shot in a jostling crowd of Chinese and American reporters and officials, shows the camera swinging erratically toward the ceiling before panning back to the hall. Trump, already seated, glanced in the direction of the commotion.
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At the Temple of Heaven, a detained American journalist could be heard shouting at Chinese security personnel: “We are in the motorcade with the President, do you not understand that?” Chinese guards told the journalists they could leave only after Xi had departed.
The standoff ended when the American press pool leader lost patience and led the group out by force, announcing: “We gotta move! We gotta go! American media, let’s go, go, go!”
According to subsequent reporting by NBC and the Wall Street Journal, the immediate trigger for the 30-minute delay was a dispute over a Secret Service agent’s firearm: Chinese security personnel refused to allow an armed American agent to enter the grounds. U.S. and Chinese officials eventually negotiated a compromise, but not before the detention had already become an international story.
The incident recalled a similar confrontation during Trump’s first visit to Beijing in November 2017. During that incident, first reported exclusively by Axios in February 2018, Chinese security personnel physically tried to stop the aide carrying the president’s nuclear command codes from entering the Great Hall of the People. A brief physical struggle ensued before the matter was resolved.
People’s Daily omitted Trump’s arrival from its front page
The morning edition of People’s Daily, the CCP’s official newspaper, hit newsstands on May 14 without a single mention of Trump or the impending summit on the front page. Instead, the front page led with a speech Xi had delivered in March 2026, headlined “Widely Uniting Forces to Advance Chinese-Style Modernization.” The economics pages focused on technology investment and projects under the Party’s Belt and Road Initiative, the state-directed infrastructure lending program Beijing uses to expand its influence across the developing world.
CNN noted the omission. Its analysts suggested two possible explanations: that the Party’s media logic simply prioritizes Xi’s own pronouncements over all other events, or that print deadlines made it impossible to include news of Trump’s late-night arrival.
A review of the May 14 edition of People’s Daily found that coverage related to U.S.-China relations appeared on page three in the newspaper’s “Important News” section. The coverage included three articles titled “Promoting deeper people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States,” “Exploring the right way for China and the United States to get along in the new era (ambassador’s column),” and “A more stable China-U.S. relationship matters for the world.”
CCP state TV appears to intentionally misinterpret Trump’s statements
Once state television did begin covering the summit, it chose to highlight Trump’s words rather than report them accurately.
CCTV, the CCP’s main state broadcaster, posted a video with the headline: “Trump tells Xi Jinping: ‘You are a great leader.'” The choice of pronoun was deliberate. Chinese has two forms of the second-person singular: “你” (nǐ), the ordinary word for “you,” and “您” (nín), an honorific used to convey deep respect, typically toward elders or social superiors. CCTV used “您” in its headline, implying Trump had addressed Xi with exceptional deference. Trump spoke in English and used no such distinction; the honorific was inserted entirely by the Party’s translators and editors.
This technique has recent precedent. In January 2026, when Xi received British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Beijing, CCTV’s report rendered Starmer’s words using “您” and attributed to him the phrase “As you said, respected Chairman Xi…” Starmer said no such thing in those terms.
