On Could 14, China’s prime chief Xi Jinping took U.S. President Donald Trump to the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, the place the 2 posed for a photograph standing earlier than the Corridor of Prayer for Good Harvests. English studies handled the go to to the Temple of Heaven as a mere formality between talks – the phrase “adopted by a go to to the Temple of Heaven” was typically sandwiched between Xi’s warning on Taiwan and soybean commerce points.
Nevertheless, if we evaluate the venues chosen for every U.S. president’s go to to China, we’ll see that the diplomatic settings organized by China are an exhibition of Beijing’s discourse on the supply of its legitimacy and indicators for its coverage tendency.
This historical past dates again to Richard Nixon’s go to to China in 1972. Though Nixon visited Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, the formal reception happened in Beijing. The state banquet and talks have been centered across the Nice Corridor of the Folks, a constructing in-built 1959. It was purposefully designed to negate the imperial legacy, with a reputation incorporating “the individuals” and structure emphasizing revolutionary modernity – grand, symmetrical, and de-decorated. After the banquet, Nixon was organized to observe the revolutionary ballet, “The Purple Detachment of Ladies.” The message from Beijing was clear: we’re a brand new regime breaking with the previous, our legitimacy derived from revolution.
Throughout this era, China’s prime chief by no means personally accompanied overseas heads of state on sightseeing excursions. Mao Zedong met with Nixon solely as soon as, in his research at Zhongnanhai; the U.S. president was accompanied by Vice Premier Li Xiannian on the Nice Wall and by Marshal Ye Jianying on the Forbidden Metropolis.
Three years later, President Gerald Ford’s 1975 go to to China included the Temple of Heaven, the Summer time Palace, and the Nice Wall – a typical sightseeing route accompanied by a deputy chief, with none political narrative.
After the reform and opening up, China deliberately downplayed the revolutionary narrative, shifting its focus to showcasing its civilization. Ronald Reagan’s 1984 journey to Xi’an marked the primary time a U.S. president had been taken to a cultural web site exterior of Beijing, however the framework on the time was nonetheless “mutual openness” slightly than “civilizational confidence.” Reagan even used the Terracotta Military as a damaging metaphor in his speech at Fudan College: “Generations therefore will honor us for having begun the voyage, for shifting on collectively and escaping the destiny of the buried armies of Xi’an, the buried warriors who stood for hundreds of years frozen in time, frozen in an unknowing enmity. We have now made our selection. Our new journey will proceed.”
This perspective of viewing custom as a burden was not a prejudice of Individuals, however slightly the mainstream social thought in China on the time. The 1988 CCTV documentary “River Elegy” contained a robust critique of conventional Chinese language civilization.
By the point of Invoice Clinton’s 1998 go to to China, Beijing’s presentation technique had clearly shifted to an emphasis on “range” and “openness.” Clinton’s nine-day itinerary was designed to span 5 cities with very completely different cultural landscapes: Xi’an, Beijing, Shanghai, Guilin, and Hong Kong. Jiang Zemin then allowed Clinton to provide a live-streamed speech on human rights and democracy at Peking College.
The narrative offered right here was that China is a various and open nation with historic capitals, pure landscapes, and trendy cities, and that it permits the U.S. president to talk overtly to college students about human rights and political freedom. It was now not a revolutionary nation with solely pink flags, nor was it the regime that drove tanks onto Tiananmen Sq.. 4 years later, in 2002, George W. Bush was additionally scheduled to talk at Tsinghua College, a college based by the US after the Boxer Indemnity.
The opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics marked the fruits of this logic. Zhang Yimou compressed hundreds of years of civilization into a visible spectacle, and the official slogan “One World, One Dream” bluntly declared the narrative purpose – China embraces the world, and the world accepts China. This was not solely a cultural show, but additionally a way for the Communist Get together to consolidate its political legitimacy.
In these occasions, Beijing primarily offered slightly than narrated. The highest chief’s function remained restricted to formal receptions inside the Nice Corridor of the Folks; sightseeing was organized by deputies, with out incorporating the chief’s private narrative. This follow was damaged by Xi Jinping in 2014. He introduced Barack Obama to Yingtai in Zhongnanhai – personally accompanying and explaining the proceedings. Xi reworked himself right into a storyteller of historical past, a task reversal that was itself a political act.
Yingtai is a man-made island with a singular place in trendy Chinese language historical past: Empress Dowager Cixi imprisoned the Guangxu Emperor, who had championed the reforms, there in 1898 after the failure of the Hundred Days’ Reformation till his dying ten years later. Yingtai is a spatial image of the suppression of reform. Nevertheless, Xi Jinping’s “historical past lesson” fully bypassed Guangxu. He spoke of the Kangxi Emperor’s choice to retake Taiwan from there, stating that “Chinese language civilization has valued ‘nice unity’ from the very starting.” He thus redefined Yingtai from a jail for reformers to a decision-making enviornment for the need to unify.
When Trump visited China in 2017, the venue was upgraded to the Forbidden Metropolis. The 2 heads of state and their spouses visited the Corridor of Supreme Concord, the Corridor of Central Concord, and the Corridor of Preserving Concord alongside the central axis. All three halls comprise the character “concord,” which China’s official media interpreted as “valuing concord above all else.”
Throughout the go to, Xi talked about that China has a 5,000-year historical past of civilization. Trump interjected, saying that Egypt has an 8,000-year historical past, or even perhaps older. Xi acknowledged that Egypt is certainly earlier, however instantly corrected himself: “The one steady civilization that has continued to at the present time is China. We’re additionally the unique individuals. Black hair, yellow pores and skin, handed down by means of generations, we’re known as the descendants of the dragon.” In an imperial palace, dealing with a overseas head of state, the chief of a contemporary nation outlined the continuity of civilization by bloodline and pores and skin colour. This was not idle discuss, however an impromptu train in a principle of legitimacy.
To explain the extent of Trump’s 2017 reception, the Chinese language Ministry of Overseas Affairs invented an unprecedented protocol class: “state visit-plus.” The necessity for a diplomatic system to create new classes past present ranges of etiquette implies that Beijing believes the usual worldwide etiquette language derived from the Westphalian system is inadequate to specific what it needs to say.
In 2026, Xi accompanied Trump to the Temple of Heaven – the area for communication between the emperor and heaven, the fabric service of the idea of the Mandate of Heaven. Xi informed Trump in entrance of the Corridor of Prayer for Good Harvests: “Historic Chinese language rulers would maintain prayer ceremonies right here for prosperity of the nation, happiness of the individuals and good harvests, which embodies the normal Chinese language ethos that individuals are the muse of a rustic and solely when the individuals lead life can the nation thrive.”
Xi continued instantly: “Carrying ahead and growing the people-centered philosophy in Chinese language civilization, the Communist Get together of China has stayed dedicated to the abiding mission of serving the individuals wholeheartedly.” There was no transition from the emperor’s sacrifices to Heaven to the legitimacy of the Communist Get together’s rule. In Xi’s telling, the celebration’s rein and the Mandate of Heaven have been of the identical origin.
Moreover, Beijing’s diplomatic maneuvering will not be merely about deciding on venues, however about rewriting the historic significance of these venues domestically by means of exterior occasions to suit into its altering political agenda. Yingtai’s reform reminiscences have been overlaid with a unification narrative. The Forbidden Metropolis was reworked from a “Palace of Blood and Tears” (because it was seen through the Mao period) right into a “distinctive image of Chinese language civilization” through the Xi period. The Temple of Heaven, as soon as an area for imperial sacrifices, is reinterpreted as an emblem of “the Chinese language worldview” – the political and theological which means of worshipping Heaven is translated into cultural philosophy and its inheritance.
Every venue choice was accompanied by semantic cleaning: preserving the area’s grandeur, eradicating its political risks, and injecting the narrative wanted by the present regime. As Guang Yang lately analyzed in The Diplomat, Beijing excels at utilizing phrase substitution to arrange discourse for coverage shifts earlier than or after the actual fact. The identical logic applies to diplomatic areas: the bodily construction of the venue stays unchanged, however the historic significance it’s allowed to hold is quietly changed.
Diplomatic protocol isn’t merely protocol. The selection of venues in the US additionally sends indicators: the White Home is the usual institutional association, Camp David suggests a particular alliance, and Mount Vernon or personal estates mark private relationships. However Beijing has a special grammar. The half-century trajectory from the Nice Corridor of the Folks to the Temple of Heaven means that China’s selection of diplomatic settings is a materialized expression of its principle of state legitimacy, and thus it may be learn, tracked, and predicted. Solely by understanding this could we extra precisely choose what Beijing intends to say subsequent. What it needs to say contains, however will not be restricted to, the next three factors:
First, the framework relating to Taiwan is altering. Beneath the revolutionary narrative, the Taiwan concern is about “liberation,” whereas beneath the narrative of a civilized empire, it’s about “unification” – the restoration of imperial order. It stays to be seen when and to what extent this similar narrative sample will lengthen to different elements of the “East Asian world.”
Second, the deeper logic of the “Sinicization of faith” coverage has change into clearer. If the Communist Get together’s legitimacy has shifted from “revolution” to “the secular successor to the Mandate of Heaven,” then it must monopolize not solely spiritual organizations, but additionally the very proper to outline what’s sacred. Using the Temple of Heaven as a diplomatic setting coincides with this bigger shift.
Third, the narrative of legitimacy has shifted from the revolution of the Mao period or the worldwide order of the reform and opening-up interval to “civilized empire,” altering Beijing’s sensitivity to exterior criticism. Regimes reliant on revolutionary narratives fear about ideological revisionism; regimes reliant on the worldwide order rely on efficiency legitimacy. However what about regimes reliant on the narrative of a civilized empire? This is a matter that have to be taken significantly and thought of deeply.
