China leaves business leaders at home for Washington summit

Chinese business executives were notably absent during President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington, a stark contrast to the titans of US business turning out for a black-tie dinner at the White House.

Of the 134 names on the guest list for Thursday's extravagant White House state banquet, only 19 were part of the Chinese delegation leaving experts divided over the motivation behind the obvious imbalance.

"I would say it simply reflects the reality that Xi and China's priority is not business or trade deals, but to make the visit a success, at least in terms of optics," Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute said.

"If trade were very high priority, they would have senior business leaders on tow."

Apart from Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan, the Chinese delegation included his right-hand man Cai Qi, the country's top diplomat Wang Yi and Chinese ambassador to the United States and top trade negotiator He Lifeng.

Those joining the high-profile evening for the US included Apple's Tim Cook, Lisa Su of memory chip giant Advanced Micro Devices and Jensen Huang of Nvidia -- which has been banned from exporting its best semiconductors to China.

Tech icons Mark Zuckerberg, Open AI's Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos were also invited, as was Elon Musk.

The Chinese foreign ministry refused to comment when asked by reporters whether a trade delegation would travel with Xi.

Experts also raised the sensitive way Chinese business activities are viewed in the US, to internal Chinese bureaucracy, visa issues, or a deliberate move by Beijing among possible reasons.

"I understand originally the Chinese government did want to bring some Chinese CEOs to join Xi for the state visit," said George Chen, Chair of Digital Practice at The Asia Group.

"But such a plan fell apart mainly due to internal bureaucracy and process problems such as visas for some Chinese CEOs, as their companies are in sensitive sectors like AI, semiconductors and batteries."

"Xi is also pragmatic in economic affairs," added Dan Wang, of the Eurasia Group. "Neither side could make strategic concessions on tech, China is set to be more self-sufficient in tech without increasing reliance on US chips."

"The point of bringing Chinese tech or state-owned enterprise CEOs to the US also seems pointless given the political pushback in Congress," she told AFP.

In contrast Trump intended to "show off American tech and AI, and he succeeded", Jean-Pierre Cabestan, from the Hong Kong Baptist University said.

- 'Supporting role' -

When Xi visited the United States as president in 2015, there were 15 Chinese businesspeople -- including Alibaba's Jack Ma -- among the delegation, according to state media.

On a 2012 trip as vice president Xi led a delegation of 500 entrepreneurs.

But the longer Xi has remained in office, the more unlikely it has become for him to bring a business delegation on trips abroad.

In April 2014, President Xi visited four European countries -- the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Belgium -- with an accompanying economic and trade delegation of over 200 entrepreneurs.

His state visit to Britain in 2015 was accompanied by 150 business people.

On his 2024 trip to France Xi was accompanied by "a delegation of Chinese entrepreneurs", from both state-owned and private enterprises, but official sources did not list an exact number.

Meanwhile visits this year to Egypt, Kyrgyzstan and Pyongyang don't detail any trade delegation at all accompanying the president -- nor on a high-profile state visit to Russia last year.

However, Chen said the lack of a trade delegation did not mean that the visit would not be beneficial for Chinese businesses.

"China is all about the government, top-down decision making, and the Chinese private sector has little influence or leverage on the government -- unlike how much lobbying power Elon Musk, Tim Cook and others may have on President Trump," he said.

"China CEOs always play the supporting role and the two lead actors this week are Xi and Trump. As long as the two leaders had good meetings...that's good for both Chinese and American business for the long term."

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