Trump invites China’s Xi Jinping to attend inauguration, CBS News reports

WASHINGTON (Reuters): US President-elect Donald Trump has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration next month, CBS News reported on Wednesday, citing multiple sources.

The invitation to the Jan. 20 inauguration in Washington occurred in early November, shortly after the Nov. 5 presidential election, and it was not clear if it had been accepted, CBS reported.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump said in an interview with NBC News conducted on Friday that he “got along with very well” with Xi and that they had “had communication as recently as this week.”

It would be unprecedented for a leader of China, a top US geopolitical rival, to attend a US presidential inauguration.

Trump has named numerous China hawks to key posts in his incoming administration, including Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state.

The president-elect has said he will impose an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods unless Beijing does more to stop trafficking of the highly addictive narcotic fentanyl. He also threatened tariffs in excess of 60 percent on Chinese goods while on the campaign trail.

In late November, China’s state media warned Trump that his pledge to slap additional tariffs on Chinese goods over fentanyl flows could drag the world’s top two economies into a mutually destructive tariff war.

Separately on Wednesday, China’s US Ambassador Xie Feng read a letter from Xi to a US-China Business Council gala in Washington, in which the Chinese leader said Beijing was prepared to stay in communication with the US.

“We should choose dialogue over confrontation and win-win cooperation over zero-sum games,” Xi said in the letter.

Xie added that the two countries should not decouple supply chains. But Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to Beijing, said in a prerecorded video address that China at times tried to “sugar coat” challenging and competitive relations.