When Donald Trump boarded Air Force One for Beijing on Tuesday, he brought two cabinet members whose presence in China would have seemed unlikely a year ago, highlighting an unusual moment in U.S.–China relations.
The first is Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth has become the first American defence chief in decades to accompany a sitting president on a state visit to China, and the first time a U.S. president has travelled there with a defence secretary since Richard Nixon’s landmark visit in 1972.
It is also Hegseth’s first visit to China since taking office, and the first time a U.S. defence chief has visited the country in nearly eight years. Defence secretaries do not typically join presidential state visits to China, and the optics of bringing the head of the military to a country regarded as America’s primary strategic competitor have historically been considered too politically sensitive. That calculus now appears to have shifted.
The second is Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio is the first sitting U.S. secretary of state under Chinese sanctions to visit Beijing. That is not a minor footnote. China sanctioned Rubio twice in 2020 when he was still a senator — once in retaliation for U.S. sanctions on Chinese officials over the alleged mistreatment of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, and again in response to measures targeting mainland Chinese and Hong Kong officials following the 2019 protests. The sanctions included an entry ban. For years, Rubio and China existed in a state of formal mutual hostility.
Beijing found a quiet way around that impasse. Two diplomats familiar with the matter said Chinese authorities began using a different Chinese character for the “Lu” portion of Rubio’s surname shortly before he took office in January 2025, effectively sidestepping the technical implications of the earlier sanctions.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Rubio described China as an unprecedented geopolitical challenge for the United States. Since taking office, however, he has aligned more closely with Trump’s emphasis on maintaining economic engagement with China. He has met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, twice on the sidelines of events held outside China but Tuesday’s trip to Beijing marks his first visit to the country in his current role.
The composition of the delegation travelling with Trump is striking in its breadth. Alongside Hegseth and Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Elon Musk are also making the trip - a combination of diplomatic, military, economic and private-sector influence that signals the administration is treating the summit as strategically significant across multiple fronts.
The agenda is expected to cover trade, technology, Taiwan and broader security issues.
Trump is scheduled to hold bilateral talks with President Xi Jinping on Thursday and Friday. The inclusion of the defence secretary in particular will be watched closely, both for what it suggests about how Washington views the relationship and for whether military-to-military dialogue - limited in recent years - becomes part of the discussions between the two leaders.
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