San Francisco City cleaned up before Chinese President Xi Jinping visit

Published : November 16,2023

By Staff writer 

San Francisco has cleaned up several well-known homeless areas including this one at 7th Street and Mission across the street from the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco California.

The Chinese president Xi Jinping arrived in the US city of San Francisco on Tuesday where he is expected to meet with his US counterpart Joe Biden and also attend the 30th APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting.

Media outlets showed rare pictures usually not shown in western media of homeless people being removed from the streets. The governor of California confirmed to the media that a cleanup exercise was carried out ahead of president Xi Jinping visit for a meeting with his US counterpart Joe Biden. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom admitted that the city was cleaned up to impress world leaders a statement that surprised many to see a city of the richest country in the world only remembering to clean up simply to impress foreign visitors. 

The Nancy Pelosi Federal Building environs known for being an open drug market, the notorious Tenderlionand South of Market were all cleaned up.

“I know folks say, ‘Oh they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town,’ and that’s true because it’s true, but it’s also true for months and months and months prior to APEC we’ve been having different conversations and we’ve raised the bar of expectations between the city the county and the state,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., said at a news conference.

Commenting about the importance of Xi and Biden meeting, and the APEC meeting former chair of the California Energy Commission Robert Weisenmillersaid that it is  good opportunity to reset the relationship between China and US and see it continue to grow. 

China has always been angered by the US over Taiwan, and the relationship deteriorated more in 2022 when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visited China’s

Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden will have in-depth discussions on issues of strategic, overarching, and fundamental importance in shaping China-U.S. relations and major issues concerning world peace and development, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said ahead of Xi visit.