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By Maya Mehrara and Michael D. Carroll
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Chinese President Xi Jinping is not expected to attend President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration next month, despite receiving a personal invitation from Trump shortly after Election Day, two sources familiar with the planning told CBS News.
According to the CBS report, China's ambassador to the U.S. and his spouse are expected to represent Beijing at the Jan. 20 event, following standard diplomatic protocol. Sources also indicated that additional Chinese officials may join the delegation.
Inauguration organizers have assigned staff to manage diplomatic protocol during the ceremony. Both the Chinese embassy in Washington and the Trump transition team declined to comment on the matter.
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Trump extended an invitation to Xi despite recently stating that he would impose large tariffs on Chinese goods, as high as 60 percent, as a counter measure to what he termed as "massive amounts of drugs' entering US. The President-elect has also said that he plans to place limits on Chinese ownership of U.S. land and resources.
In an interview with Fox News, the President-elect's soon-to-be press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the invitation is "an example of President Trump creating an open dialogue with leaders of countries that are not just our allies, but our adversaries and competitors too."
In break with tradition, Trump has reportedly considered inviting other world leaders to the event in Washington D.C. in January, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Newsweek reached out to the Trump transition team and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China for comment via email outside of business hours.
A Chinese head of state has not previously attended an American presidential inauguration, according to State Department records.
Despite Xi's reported snub, in an interview with CNBC, the U.S. President-elect said that the country has a good relationship with China and that he has a "surprising relationship with China." He added, "We've been talking and discussing with President Xi some things," but did not go into detail about what those discussions pertained to.
Trump's relationship with China has previously been somewhat contentious, as he initiated a trade war with Beijing in his first presidential term.
Despite their past differences and the President-elect's threats of high tariffs, Beijing appears ready to work with the new Trump administration. Xi wrote that the US and China should "choose dialogue over confrontation, win-win cooperation over a zero-sum game" in a letter to the US-China Business Council.
The Chinese president also said that "there will be no winners in tariff wars, trade wars, technology wars" between the two countries in a speech earlier this week, according to CNBC.
China has also shown willingness to work with the upcoming Trump administration, offering to cooperate with the President-elect's mass deportation policy.
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