Zhongnanhai offers a prestigious setting for the meeting and represents a gesture of hospitality. Only a handful of US leaders have been inside the heavily guarded complex next to the Forbidden City. Richard Nixon, the first American president to visit China, met Chairman Mao Zedong there during his groundbreaking trip in 1972, while George W. Bush visited the walled compound twice, in 2002 and 2008. Former President Barack Obama visited in 2014.