China says ‘thorough preparations’ needed as Trump-Xi meeting hangs in the balance amid Iran war

BEIJING — China’s top diplomat Wang Yi underscored Sunday the benefits of interacting with the U.S., and signaled preparations are underway for a planned meeting between the two countries’ leaders amid differences over the war in Iran and trade tariffs.

“The agenda of high-level exchanges is already on the table,” Wang told reporters in Mandarin Chinese, according to an official translation. “What the two sides need to do now is make thorough preparations accordingly, create a suitable environment, manage the risks that do exist and remove unnecessary disruptions.”

“Turning our backs on each other would only lead to mutual misperception and miscalculation,” he said. “Sliding into conflict or confrontation would only drag the whole world down.”

After an in-person meeting in South Korea in the fall, Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump indicated plans to visit each other’s countries.

Trump is scheduled to visit China from March 31 to April 2, which would be the first trip to the country by a sitting U.S. president since 2017.

However, Beijing has yet to confirm the exact dates of a Trump visit. Wang did not elaborate either, but noted the U.S. and Chinese presidents’ high-level interactions have “provided [an] important strategic safeguard for the China-U.S. relationship to improve and move forward.”

Some analysts have raised doubts over whether the trip will happen on schedule, especially since it would likely come shortly after joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that killed its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the U.S. capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

Wang did not name either individual in his remarks to the press Sunday morning but reiterated Beijing’s calls for a ceasefire in the Iran conflict.

“This is a war that should not have happened,” he said. “It is a war that does no one any good.”

Wang has held phone calls with at least seven foreign ministers — including those of Russia, Iran and Israel — since the joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran began on Feb. 28, according to official readouts.

He was speaking Sunday to reporters on the sidelines of China’s eight-day annual parliamentary meeting that is set to wrap Thursday. China’s top leaders, including President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Qiang and Vice Premier He Lifeng, are meeting in Beijing with delegates from across the country.

The bilateral discussions come as the U.S. and China reached a fragile truce in October for lowering tariffs on each other’s goods to below 50% for one year. The two countries had previously ratcheted up duties to well over 100% during the height of tensions last spring.

In response to a question about Trump’s casting of U.S.-China relations as a new “G2” for leading the world, Wang pushed back against the idea that two countries alone would do so, instead emphasizing multipolarity.

Without naming the U.S., Wang warned against “erecting tariff barriers and pushing [for] economic and technological decoupling.”

“This is no different from using kindling to put out a fire,” he said. “You will only get burned.”