Chaos over Donald Trump’s China trip likely to further test Beijing’s patience with US

2026.03.18 15:20 The White House’s current approach contrasts with that in 2017, when Donald Trump last visited China. Photo: TNS Visits to China by foreign leaders are tightly choreographed and meticulously planned affairs, even by the usual standards of international diplomacy. But the chaotic nature of Donald Trump’s White House and his request to delay a planned visit to China in the wake of his decision to attack Iran are widely believed to be causing increasing frustration in Beijing. The South China Morning Post has previously reported that preparations for the visit had been dogged by problems, with the Chinese side said to be “apoplectic” about the way Washington’s approach had been increasingly shaped by a president dismissive of norms and traditions. Trump had initially planned to visit China between March 31 and April 2, but as the war with Iran intensified and Tehran tightened its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, he said his trip would be delayed by “five or six weeks”. Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said Trump kept changing his reasons for the delay – first linking it to China’s willingness to help ease the blockade, then saying it was because of logistics. He said this might lead Beijing to conclude “that the problem lies in the internal coordination chaos on the US side and a failure to separate crisis management from summit preparations”. He added that a delay would send a signal that, “under this Trump-style diplomacy, even highly important leader-level meetings will be strongly disrupted by external crises and internal divisions”. Trump’s efforts to pressure China, as well as major US allies, to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz suggested he was “subjectively changing the way he views the China visit”, Sun added. “He no longer sees it simply as a bilateral summit between China and the US, but is attempting to embed it within a broader framework of global crisis management and transac

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