GLOBAL ECONOMY

President Donald Trump will host Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state visit at the White House next month, marking a reciprocal visit after Trump’s trip to China in May.

The meeting, which will take place on September 24, is expected to cover trade, the global economy and artificial intelligence, alongside broader bilateral and geopolitical issues. But it will also take place as Washington sharpens its public scrutiny of Beijing’s financial disclosures.

In the State Department’s 2026 Fiscal Transparency Report, the U.S. faulted China for gaps in reporting on foreign lending and other overseas claims held by state-owned banks, commercial lenders and state enterprises. Those gaps, the report said, obscure the scale and terms of sovereign liabilities in emerging markets, complicating risk assessments and raising the prospect of abrupt defaults or debt restructurings.

The report said that although Beijing had made its enacted budget, year-end report, and executive budget proposal publicly available, including online, and had also released information on debt obligations, its disclosures were not consistently complete or current.

The U.S. also cited wider concerns over China’s fiscal architecture, noting that budget documents did not fully identify allocations to or earnings from state-owned enterprises, according to the report, while off-budget accounts remained outside regular audit and oversight. Revised budget estimates were not always published when actual spending diverged from plans.

Not all major state-owned enterprises had public, audited financial statements, the report said, and many did not disclose their debt holdings. China’s top audit institution reviewed government accounts and issued reports publicly, but did not meet international standards for independence.

The State Department also said China had established rules for awarding natural-resource extraction contracts and licenses, but did not always appear to apply them consistently. Basic information on extraction awards and public-procurement contracts was made public. China’s sovereign wealth fund, meanwhile, had a sound legal framework and disclosed its funding sources, though not its general approach to withdrawals.

The department urged Beijing to publish fuller information on central, provincial and local debt; provide a clearer account of state-enterprise finances; subject off-budget accounts to stronger oversight; and disclose detailed information on foreign claims held by sovereign funds, banks and state-owned companies.

It also called for China to publish audit reports for centrally administered state enterprises, align budget projections more closely with actual revenue and spending, strengthen the independence of its audit authority, and clarify the sovereign wealth fund’s withdrawal policy.

As the visit draws closer, the report adds a financial-accountability dimension to a White House State visit likely to be dominated by trade tensions, strategic competition and the future rules of the global economy.