WASHINGTON: A tech-heavy guest list, the fashion choices of those on it, who sits where, their body language throughout the night and what’s on the menu: these are the softer – often and glitzier – details of diplomacy.
They will be closely scrutinized at Thursday’s state dinner, offering potential clues about where things actually stand between President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping on the meatier policy matters discussed behind closed doors.
The leaders may have focused on tensions over Taiwan, trade and artificial intelligence during business hours – even as an ongoing, First Amendment fight over press access at the White House unfolded. But afterward, the attention turns to the flashy details of a swanky meal honoring Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, in the White House’s East Room.
“Everyone wants to be there,” Trump said during this week’s United Nations General Assembly. ”It’s the hottest ticket in town.”
Asked on Monday night who’d be in attendance, the president responded, “sort of everybody,” adding, “I would say you have the entire tech world, the entire banking world and a lot more.”
The dinner was expected to showcase “the positive vibes surrounding the visit” and indicate that “the president is very focused on signaling warmth and a close personal connection with Xi,” said Edgard Kagan, senior adviser and chair in China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
First lady Melania Trump’s office says she helped with the preparations for the dinner, whose menu features a first course of yellow squash velouté with wild mushrooms, fresh herbs, crispy pancetta and drizzled scallion oil.
After that, guests will get sesame-crusted sea bass with braised baby bok choy, roasted garden eggplant and a sauce verte. Dessert is vanilla crémeux with sour cherry confit and walnut frangipane, as well as ice cream with honey from the White House.
The dinner comes after the president took the unusual step of personally greeting Xi and his wife on Wednesday as they arrived at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. Normally, presidents wait for their state visit guests to arrive at the White House itself before offering a formal welcome.
A 100-foot (30 meter) long red carpet was unfurled for Xi’s plane, while a 21-person honor guard was arrayed on its sides. Two American children presented bouquets of yellow-colored flowers to Xi and his wife and a thundering flyover featured two B-1 bombers.
And, during another arrival ceremony, this one at the White House earlier Thursday, Trump and Xi watched members of the military march around the South Lawn, with the U.S. president saying, “From the time of my first election in 2016 President Xi and I have forged a friendship.”
Thursday’s dinner included an abundance of technology industry titans, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai of Google, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Michael Dell, the CEO of Dell Technologies.
During his own visit to Beijing in May, Xi treated Trump to a state dinner that unfolded beneath grand chandeliers at the Great Hall of the People. That event included many tech luminaries who are likely to be at the White House this time, such as Tim Cook, formerly Apple’s CEO, Musk and Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive.
Trump has since begun referring to the White House ballroom that he’s building as the “Great Hall of the United States” to rival where he dined in China.
“This is a very large hall,” Trump recently said of the Great Hall of the People before adding, “But we’re gonna top it.”
In 2015, as then-President Barack Obama was preparing to host Xi for a state visit, Trump – in the midst of his first run for president – criticized all the hubbub.
“Just take them to McDonald’s and go back to the negotiating table,” Trump said then, during a rally in South Carolina. He later conceded on Fox News Channel that Xi might at least be worthy of getting “probably a double-size Big Mac.”
Xi visited Trump in 2017 for the first time. But the White House said the Chinese wanted that meeting to happen at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, viewed as a more relaxed setting that might defuse some of the high expectations of a formal summit in Washington.
A dearth of pageantry didn’t mean a lack of extraordinary moments, however, underscoring just how important having China’s leader dine with Trump can be.
Later recounting the incident to Fox News Channel, Trump said he sprung a surprise on Xi just after dinner, noting that the U.S. was striking Syria as the pair was having “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen, and President Xi was enjoying it.”
Trump said he told Xi that U.S. forces had “just fired 59 missiles” and that China’s president “was eating his cake. And he was silent.”
