Xi Puts 'Three No-Changes' at the Heart of His Washington Visit
On the substantive day of Xi Jinping's state visit, his written arrival statement set out the 'three no-changes' framing of US-China ties, while Washington prepared an unprecedented 479-troop welcome ceremony and a state dinner for around 120 guests.
After the protocol-breaking airport welcome that marked Xi Jinping's arrival in Washington on Tuesday the state visit moved into its substantive day, and Beijing has been precise about how it wants the moment framed. The phrase charting at the very top of Weibo on Wednesday, with barely a dozen posts behind it, is the giveaway: 中美关系三个没有变, "the three things about China-US relations that have not changed."
The formulation comes from Xi himself. In a written statement released on arrival at Joint Base Andrews, where Donald and Melania Trump greeted the presidential couple at the foot of the stairs, Xi argued that the historical logic of peaceful coexistence between the two countries has not changed, that the two peoples' desire for friendship has not changed, and that the international community's expectation of both has not changed. The world, in other words, has moved; the underlying case for the relationship has not.
The most quoted line of the statement is aimed at both audiences at once. The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and "Make America Great Again," Xi said, "can advance in parallel without conflict, each achieving the other, to the benefit of the world." He also confirmed the vocabulary the two sides agreed on when Trump visited Beijing in May: a "constructive strategic stability" in the relationship, now elaborated as cooperation as the mainstay, competition kept within bounds, differences kept manageable and peace kept in prospect.
The ceremony planned for Wednesday morning was designed to say the same thing in choreography. According to Phoenix Television's reporting from Washington, all six branches of the US armed forces will be on parade — a typical state-visit review involves 200 to 300 troops, Wednesday's draws 479 — with strategic bombers and fighters passing over the White House, followed by a state dinner whose roughly 120 seats have been filled with a deliberately weighty guest list. Melania Trump, as the visit's own trending topic has it, ordered "the highest protocol." American children presented flowers on the red carpet at Andrews on Tuesday, a 21-gun salute was fired and both national anthems played.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asked about the visit, delivered the blunt version of the same argument: the idea that the two governments should not engage at the highest level is "irresponsible," he said — "we must engage" — and the US-China relationship will determine the direction of the 21st century. The People's Daily's summit-day editorial makes the mirror-image case for a domestic audience, crediting leader-level diplomacy with steering the relationship toward "constructive strategic stability."
What "stability" will actually produce is the question the visit now has to answer. Trade teams led by He Lifeng and Scott Bessent have been talking in New York since last week, and the deliverables announced after Wednesday's talks — on tariffs, investment and the tech restrictions in between — will show whether the three no-changes are a negotiating frame or just a welcome-banner phrase. The ceremony is the theatre; the communiqué is the story.