China is planning to invite U.S. President Donald Trump to a military parade scheduled for Sept. 3 in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, sources familiar with the matter said Sunday.
The United States, meanwhile, has proposed that Chinese President Xi Jinping visit the country during the same month, coinciding with a U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York, the sources said.
If either plan is realized, it would be the first in-person meeting between the leaders of the world's two largest economies since Trump's return to the White House in January for a nonconsecutive second four-year term.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to attend the parade in Beijing, held to commemorate what China calls its victory in the 1937-1945 War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. A joint celebration of war victory by the leaders of China, Russia and the United States would likely pose a diplomatic challenge for Japan.
During their phone talks on June 5, Xi invited Trump to visit China again, for which the U.S. president expressed heartfelt appreciation, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Trump, who last visited in 2017, said he reciprocated the invitation.
Even if Trump himself is eager to travel to China, Beijing believes U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, known as a longtime China hawk, and many other senior U.S. officials may oppose the president's attendance at the military parade, the sources said.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government is reluctant to have Xi visit the United States, concerned about a Xi-Trump version of the Oval Office meeting in February where Trump publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the sources said.
It is considering having Premier Li Qiang attend the U.N. meeting instead. The United Nations marks the 80th anniversary of its founding this year.
A Chinese source suggested Beijing aims to set up the first Sino-U.S. summit talks since the start of the second Trump administration on Chinese soil so it can limit press coverage and engineer a "successful" summit.
China and the United States, which have been engaged in a tit-for-tat tariff war, agreed to lower trade tensions by establishing a 90-day truce in May, with the two countries committed to backing away from their respective triple-digit tariffs.
But tensions remain over such issues as Beijing's slow removal of export controls on critical rare-earth minerals used in high-tech products and Washington's policy to "aggressively" revoke the visas of Chinese students, specifically those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or those studying in sensitive fields.
China has staged large-scale military parades in the Tiananmen Square. In 2019, a parade to mark the 70th anniversary of Communist rule showcased the country's state-of-the-art weapons including a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile believed capable of hitting almost anywhere in the United States.
In 2015, Putin and then South Korean President Park Geun Hye were among the foreign leaders who observed a military parade in Tiananmen to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II.
Source: Kyodo News
Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
