US President Donald Trump presented Chinese President Xi Jinping with a sculpture of a bald eagle, a bird native to North America and the national symbol of the United States. The gift was presented during a gala state dinner in Washington.
In unveiling the sculpture to guests of honor at Thursday's dinner, Trump said it embodies the "free and soaring spirit of America."
According to him, he and first lady Melania Trump took part in developing the design of the sculpture. The exchange of such gifts is an important, if sometimes difficult, part of international diplomacy.
Such gestures may seem small, but they serve the broader purpose of the three-day summit between Xi and Trump - establishing personal relationships between the leaders of the world's two superpowers.
“They will discuss all these complex issues, but at the end of the day it is still two people,” says Daniel Kritenbrink, a partner at consultancy The Asia Group. “That’s why personal relationships matter.” And I think exchanging gifts is one of the important parts of that relationship.”
Krietenbrink, who spent more than 30 years as an American diplomat, mostly in Asia, says personal relationships are of particular importance to Xi Jinping.
In his opinion, direct contact between Trump and Xi is a kind of glue that holds together “the most complex and most significant bilateral relationship in the world.”
Trump, Kritenbrink says, also places great emphasis on what the expert calls “leader-level diplomacy.”
Gifts have a special place in the Trump presidency.
The American president received a luxurious wide-body aircraft, an engraved gold bar, a gold ring decorated with diamonds and precious stones, and other expensive gifts.
“If you look at the Trump presidency from this perspective, gift exchange - in the broad sense of the mechanism - is certainly an important part of his approach,” says Ole Jakob Sanding of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
On Thursday morning, Xi Jinping announced that China will donate two pandas to Zoo Atlanta and will also launch a new student exchange program that will allow 100,000 American students to study in China over five years.
“Giant pandas have always been ambassadors of friendship between the Chinese and American people,” Xi said. “In a few days, two pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, will arrive at their new home at Zoo Atlanta and meet the Americans.”
It is unclear whether the Chinese leader gave any other gifts. The BBC has approached the White House for comment.
Today, the tradition of presenting luxurious gifts to leaders is preserved mainly in the Gulf countries and states with authoritarian regimes.
“Autocracies like China give much more expensive gifts,” says Morten Skumsrud Anderson, who has conducted research with Ole Jakob Sending on the role of gifts in diplomacy.
According to Anderson, in the West this tradition has become much more modest due to the restrictions that exist in democratic systems.
For example, the US Constitution has an emoluments clause that limits the value of gifts the president can accept from foreign countries.
Currently this limit is $525. Anything worth more becomes federal property, unless the president decides to buy the gift with his own money.
In addition, if the value of a gift that an American president intends to give to a foreign leader exceeds the established limit, he must obtain Congressional approval - unless he pays for the gift from his own funds.
“There are a lot of rules and protocol requirements,” Sending says. “Literally everything is carefully thought out: what gift to choose, where the exchange should take place, how and when it should happen. All this is pre-written down to the smallest detail and requires negotiations at a lower level that last for weeks.”
“This is not a last-minute airport purchase,” adds Anderson.
During Xi Jinping's state visit to the United States in 2013, then-President Barack Obama gave him a bench with a commemorative inscription made from California redwood, a tree native to the state where their meeting took place. Afterwards, the leaders sat on it together, smiling at the photographers.
The gift exchange in 2009 was much less successful. Then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown presented Obama with a decorative pen holder made from the wood of a historic ship that took part in the fight against the slave trade. Obama responded by gifting Brown a set of DVDs, which were reported to be incompatible with British players.
“This is one example of a rather awkward gift exchange,” Sending says.
Fortunately, Brown and Obama were allies, not rivals, trying to overcome intractable differences.
“There's no room for error here,” Sending says, noting that a poorly chosen gift could potentially derail larger diplomatic goals.
This is their third face-to-face meeting since the start of Trump's second term. The summit comes amid growing concerns about the risks posed by artificial intelligence, as the US and China battle for leadership in the fast-growing industry.
