Trump Hosts Xi at White House State Dinner With Tech Titans and Sea Bass

President Donald Trump hosted China's leader Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at a White House state dinner on Thursday, an event the president described as "the hottest ticket in town."

The East Room dinner followed a day of formal ceremonies and closed-door discussions that touched on Taiwan, trade and artificial intelligence. The softer details of the evening — the guest list, seating, fashion and menu — were expected to draw close scrutiny for clues about the state of the relationship between the two leaders.

Asked earlier in the week who would attend, Trump said "sort of everybody," adding that the room would include "the entire tech world, the entire banking world and a lot more." The guest list bore that out, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla and SpaceX's Elon Musk, Google's Sundar Pichai, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell among those expected.

First lady Melania Trump's office said she helped with preparations for the dinner. The menu opened with yellow squash velouté with wild mushrooms, fresh herbs, crispy pancetta and scallion oil. The main course was sesame-crusted sea bass with braised baby bok choy, roasted garden eggplant and a sauce verte. Dessert featured vanilla crémeux with sour cherry confit and walnut frangipane, along with ice cream made with honey from the White House.

The evening capped an unusually elaborate welcome. Trump personally greeted Xi and his wife on Wednesday as they arrived at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, a step presidents normally reserve for the White House itself. A 100-foot red carpet was laid out for Xi's plane, flanked by a 21-person honor guard, while two American children presented bouquets of yellow flowers and two B-1 bombers conducted a flyover.

At a White House arrival ceremony on Thursday, the two leaders watched service members march across the South Lawn. Trump said that "from the time of my first election in 2016 President Xi and I have forged a friendship."

Edgard Kagan, a senior adviser and chair in China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the dinner was expected to showcase "the positive vibes surrounding the visit" and signal that "the president is very focused on signaling warmth and a close personal connection with Xi."

The pageantry contrasted with Trump's own past commentary on such events. During his first presidential campaign in 2015, as then-President Barack Obama prepared to host Xi, Trump suggested at a South Carolina rally that the Chinese leader should simply be taken to McDonald's and then back to the negotiating table. He later told Fox News Channel that Xi might merit "probably a double-size Big Mac."

Xi's first visit to Trump came in 2017, when the White House said the Chinese preferred meeting at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, seen as a more relaxed setting that could lower expectations for a formal Washington summit. Trump later recounted to Fox News Channel that he surprised Xi after dinner by informing him of a U.S. strike on Syria, saying the Chinese president sat silent while enjoying "the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen."

During his own visit to Beijing in May, Xi hosted Trump at a state dinner beneath grand chandeliers at the Great Hall of the People, with tech figures including Tim Cook, Musk and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang in attendance. Trump has since taken to calling the White House ballroom he is building the "Great Hall of the United States," saying of its Chinese counterpart, "This is a very large hall. But we're gonna top it."