In a September meeting weighted with symbolic gravity, China's President Xi Jinping arrived at Joint Base Andrews to begin a formal state visit to the United States — the highest diplomatic honor one nation can extend to another. President Trump departed from customary protocol by greeting Xi personally on the tarmac, a gesture that both capitals appeared to frame not as routine ceremony but as a deliberate signal of consequence. The encounter arrives amid years of deepening complexity between Washington and Beijing, suggesting that both sides have concluded, at least for now, that direct enga