U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are seen at the APEC summit in South Korea, Oct. 30, 2025. The two leaders are scheduled to hold in-person talks this month.Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
Beijing on Monday urged U.S. President Donald Trump to go ahead with a planned state visit to China this month, after Mr. Trump suggested delaying his trip as he seeks to enlist the Chinese and other foreign navies to help police the Strait of Hormuz.
The strait, a key international waterway controlled by Iran, has been essentially closed for weeks now. Tehran has allegedly laid mines inside it and threatened to fire upon ships carrying oil and gas from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea in response to continuing U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran, which have killed hundreds of civilians.
Writing on his Truth Social platform over the weekend, Mr. Trump said, “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint will send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated.”
“In the meantime, the United States will be bombing the hell out of the shoreline, and continually shooting Iranian Boats and Ships out of the water,” he added. “One way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait OPEN, SAFE, and FREE!”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Mr. Trump said he’d “love to” make the trip to Beijing, “but because of the war, I want to be here.”
“I have to be here, I feel and so we’ve requested that we delay it a month or so,” he said. “I’m looking forward to being with them. We have a very good relationship. But … we got a war going on.”
The war comes home in the form of higher energy prices
Earlier Monday, responding to reports Mr. Trump was seeking a delay, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said that “head-of-state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable strategic guiding role in China-U.S. relations.”
The two sides were “maintaining communication regarding President Trump’s state visit to China,” Mr. Lin added.
Regarding the Strait of Hormuz, Mr. Lin said recent tensions in the region “have disrupted international trade and energy shipping channels, undermining peace and stability in the region and the world.
“China calls on all parties to immediately cease military actions, prevent further escalation of tensions, and stop regional turbulence from inflicting greater damage on global economic development,” he said.
In response to Mr. Trump’s call for an international naval force to patrol the strait, the Global Times, a Chinese state-run tabloid, asked whether the U.S. leader’s call to share responsibility wasn’t really a demand to share “the risk of a war that Washington started and can’t finish.”
“Crowding a volatile waterway with warships from multiple nations doesn’t create security. It creates flashpoints. If any single vessel were struck, the consequences could rapidly spiral beyond anyone’s control. This is less international co-operation ‘to keep the Strait open and safe’ and more a carefully structured transfer of risk,” the paper said in an editorial.
“Washington is asking who will send warships. Beijing is asking how to stop the war. The contrast in approach is sharp.”
Mr. Trump’s scheduled visit to China this month was agreed upon during a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea last year, where the two men secured a truce in a rapidly escalating trade war that Mr. Trump had launched after returning to office.
That dispute, which at its worst saw both sides impose tariffs that would have essentially cut off trade between the world’s two largest economies, had threatened China’s recovery, which was finally showing improvements after years of stuttering growth in the wake of disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier this month, China set an annual growth target of 4.5 per cent to 5 per cent, the lowest in decades, citing international volatility and a domestic economy that remains “in the midst of a profound transformation.”
Data released Monday were positive, however, showing a boost in both industrial activity and consumer spending in January and February, though this would not reflect any disruptions or concerns resulting from the war in Iran.
With a report from Alexandra Li in Beijing