ทรัมป์ เชิญ สี จิ้นผิง ร่วมพิธีสาบานตน 2025: เกมการเมืองโลก หรือการแหกธรรมเนียม?
Summary
The invitation to Xi Jinping for the January 2025 inauguration breaks with a US convention that has never included foreign heads of state in the ceremony.
China declined, for reasons of protocol and of domestic political risk on its own side.
The gesture reads two ways: as opening a channel before a new round of trade war, or as positioning himself as the one who extended a hand first.
Either way it reflects how hard Trump’s China posture is to predict at a moment when tension between the two powers is rising.
Key points
There is no such custom
A US inauguration is a domestic occasion, not a stage for receiving foreign leaders.
China had reasons to decline
Attending would have been read at home as accepting a subordinate position.
It reads as both an opening and a manoeuvre
An invitation known in advance to be refused still pays off in optics.
The timing matters
It came just before a new round of tariffs, so it cannot be read apart from the trade war.
The unpredictability is itself the policy
For countries that have to plan around it, that uncertainty is a direct cost.