{"id":61466,"date":"2026-09-25T14:31:47","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/why-trump-gave-xi-an-eagle-statue-at-white-house-state-dinner\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T14:31:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:31:47","slug":"why-trump-gave-xi-an-eagle-statue-at-white-house-state-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/why-trump-gave-xi-an-eagle-statue-at-white-house-state-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Trump gave Xi an eagle statue at White House state dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They&#8217;re going to discuss all of these complicated issues,&#8221; Daniel Kritenbrink, partner at The Asia Group says. &#8220;But at the end of the day, these are still two human beings. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;So that personal relationship means something,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I think the gift exchange is one key part of that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kritenbrink, who spent over 30 years as a US diplomat, mostly in Asia, says personal relationships are of particular importance to Xi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He believes the direct Trump-Xi bond is the glue that is holding together &#8220;the most complex and the most consequential relationship in the world&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He says Trump, too, values what Kritenbrink calls &#8220;leader-level diplomacy&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gifts have had a unique presence in the Trump presidency. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The US president has received a luxury jumbo jet, an engraved gold bar, a diamond-and-jewel encrusted gold ring, and more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ole Jacob Sending from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs says: &#8220;You think about the Trump presidency in that way, I think gift giving, certainly broadly defined, is very much part of how he operates.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On Thursday morning, Xi announced a gift of two Chinese pandas to a zoo in Atlanta &#8211; and a new student exchange programme, which will welcome 100,000 US students to study in China over five years. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The giant panda have been an envoy of friendship between the Chinese and the Americans,&#8221; Xi said. &#8220;In a few days, two pandas &#8211; Ping Ping and Fu Shuang &#8211; will come to their new home in Zoo Atlanta and meet with the American people.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It&#8217;s unclear if he gave any further presents. The BBC has contacted the White House. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c6lyqlx0kp0po?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re going to discuss all of these complicated issues,&#8221; Daniel Kritenbrink, partner at The Asia Group says. &#8220;But at the end of the day, these are still two human beings. &#8220;So that personal relationship means something,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I think the gift exchange is one key part of that.&#8221; Kritenbrink, who spent over 30 years [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61468,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61466\/revisions\/61468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}