US President Donald Trump and his large business entourage have been greeted with a lavish welcome in Beijing at the start of his three-day visit to China.

But, according to a distinguished former US diplomat, Trump attends talks as a "supplicant" due to "the dominance of China in the global market."

David Satterfield, a former ambassador to both Lebanon and Türkiye and a special Middle East envoy under President Joe Biden, told CGTN’s Jamie Owen that Trump's meeting "comes at a moment when the US is caught in this enduring stalemate with Iran over the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. China has a strong interest in seeing the Strait opened. Eighty percent of Iran's exported crude goes to China; China needs it." 

"There's no doubt that the president (Trump) will raise the issue of Iran and the Strait with Beijing. But all of this presents a situation in which the president of the United States comes to China essentially as a supplicant, not as the demandeur. The Chinese hold the upper hand here."

The US president is joined in Beijing by several businesses CEO's including Elon Musk, Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Apple's Tim Cook. 

Trump asked Huang at the last minute to join the trip, said a source familiar with the matter.

"I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to 'open up' China so that these brilliant people can work their magic," he said in a post on Truth Social, referring to the CEO delegation.

Satterfield said Trump’s aims to strike major commercial deals won't be easy. "The composition of the president's delegation with the various AI and IT CEOs and owners coming with him, certainly indicates to me that the president hopes to get deals out of this."

He said this was a "far cry from where the administration and the president started, going back to April of last year, tariffs, punitive measures on China over fentanyl, over tech, over trade barriers. There are indeed trade barriers, things have shifted dramatically and they've not shifted in the favor of the president's position."

Satterfield added: "What has changed is the dominance of China in the global market at what we would call the highest level, the cutting edge of products." 

He said the assumption during Trump's previous visit to Beijing in 2017 was that "China could produce a wide range of goods more quickly, more cheaply, distribute on time, but it really couldn't master the highest degree of IT or chip or other technologies. That's no longer the case."

'Enormous advantage'

Seventy-one-year-old Satterfield has spent almost three decades at the top level of US diplomacy and says Trump needs the trip to be seen as a success. "His minimal need is to be able to somewhat credibly present the outcomes as a positive success, and not something driven by Chinese priorities."

He added: "China knows the president cannot afford a confrontation with China in the midst of the confrontation with Iran. That gives them an enormous advantage, and frankly if I were to have been asked about the timing of this meeting, my recommendation to the president, to any US President in this situation, would be 'don't go now. You go in a weaker position and China in a strengthened one.'"

Trump's two days of meetings will include a grand reception at The Great Hall of the People, a tour of Beijing's 600-year-old Temple of Heaven imperial religious complex, and a state banquet.