Xi's motorcade arrives at White House for welcome ceremony held by Trump

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, arrived at the White House on Thursday morning to attend a welcome ceremony held by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, waited outside the White House for Xi's motorcade to arrive.

At the invitation of Trump, Xi is paying a state visit to the United States from Wednesday to Friday.

Rising Chinese demand for services, from travel to finance, is fueling the rapid expansion of services trade with the United States and opening new opportunities for American businesses.

China's services imports topped 620 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, making it the world's second-largest services importer. That growing demand has created enormous opportunities for the global services industry.

From 2001 to 2025, trade between the two countries in services grew nearly ninefold, while the U.S. surplus surged nearly fifteenfold. As Chinese companies channel more resources into the sector, new openings are emerging for U.S. businesses.

"As the service market in China has been growing both in scale and sophistication, I think the real opportunity for multinationals is not only to sell products and services in the market, but also to participate in the innovation itself," said Andrew Wu, CEO of Dun and Bradstreet China, the Chinese arm of the global business data and analytics firm.

"The services industry here in China, whether it's leveraging AI, whether it's tech, whether it's health services, I think there's tremendous opportunity to focus on small and medium-sized businesses," said Randy Peers, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.

China was the largest source of the U.S. services surplus in 2025, accounting for one-tenth of the total, or nearly 100 million U.S. dollars a day. Travel, intellectual-property royalties and financial services are among the main sources.

Meanwhile, China's services exports to the United States have also grown steadily, with transportation, travel and financial services ranking as the top three.

With AI and digital technologies reshaping services trade, the two countries' strengths complement each other like never before.

"We've set up a digital research and development center in Nanjing, with an investment of four billion yuan. Right now, 90 percent of our orders come from digital channels. That's the kind of effect you get from a market as big as China's," said Gu Lei, chief impact officer of McDonald's China.

"I think lots of capabilities really complement each other. We've been providing our partners with our sales marketing solution, compliance solution and the financial service solution. And our Chinese partners have been providing us with cloud computing and large language models to enable that innovation for us on the ground here," said Wu.

Looking ahead, Wu said that with both countries pursuing growth opportunities, he hopes businesses on both sides will continue to collaborate and bring valuable new products to the market.