Who attended the White House dinner in honour of Chinese leader Xi Jinping?

Government officials, executives from the artificial intelligence sector and some of America’s leading chief executives gathered on Thursday evening in the East Room of the White House for a state dinner in honour of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, following a day of elaborate ceremonies aimed at stabilising the fragile relationship between the United States and its main geopolitical rival.

The guest list illustrates the complex ties between the world’s two largest economies, which remain deeply interconnected despite competition for dominance in emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

Xi and President Donald Trump dined on sea bass in a crust of toasted sesame seeds, alongside the heads of companies developing some of the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence models, whilst American officials fear that Chinese systems are rapidly catching up with their American counterparts. Also present were executives whose companies rely on Chinese factories and materials – many of which have relocated production elsewhere due to ongoing trade tensions – as well as the heads of social media platforms and other companies banned in China.

Here are some of the most prominent guests and what is at stake for them.

Leading figures in the artificial intelligence sector attended the dinner at a time when they are divided over how to manage the risks associated with the technology and on the possibility of collaborating with China to avert an AI-induced catastrophe.

On the one hand, there is OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, who in recent weeks has said that companies must slow down the development of AI and that governments must work together to create new forms of control over the technology. Both positions put him at odds with the White House. Unlike its rival Anthropic, however, OpenAI has avoided a direct confrontation with the Trump administration.

Also present at the dinner was OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman, who, together with his wife, donated $25 million to a super PAC aligned with Trump. OpenAI does not allow access to its AI models from China and has often portrayed Beijing as a competitive threat whilst lobbying Washington for favourable regulations. (The Washington Post has an editorial partnership with OpenAI.)

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, an ally of Trump and founder of SpaceXAI, will also be there. Musk has also joined other CEOs in calling for a slowdown in the development of AI to improve its safety.

On the other side of the debate are David Sacks, the former White House ‘tsar’ for AI and cryptocurrencies, and Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, who have played down fears that AI could cause a catastrophe and argue that ensuring safety is the responsibility of the companies developing AI themselves.

Nvidia has lobbied to retain access to the Chinese market and last year secured permission from the administration to sell some of its advanced AI chips in China. The decision has drawn criticism from some national security experts and Democrats, who argue that the administration is providing China with the materials it needs to catch up in the AI race.

Sacks is the architect of the Trump administration’s policies aimed at accelerating the development of AI. He left his post at the White House at the start of the year, but remains an influential adviser on technology policy.

The Trump administration has made a strong effort to bring manufacturing back to the United States through tariffs, but many of the companies represented at the dinner rely on China for factories, components and low-cost products.

For Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook, China represents the backbone of the company’s manufacturing operations and one of its most important markets. Although Apple is reducing its reliance on Chinese manufacturing and has shifted part of its supply chain to India due to tariffs, China remains the main assembly hub for the majority of iPhones sold worldwide.

China is also an important market for Apple, which sells millions of iPhones there every year. However, the company’s compliance with Chinese censorship and its relationship with Beijing have at times been a political issue in Washington.

In addition to his SpaceXAI venture, Musk serves as chief executive and majority shareholder of Tesla, another American company that relies heavily on China for both production and sales. In an interview with the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV before the dinner, Musk described the Shanghai factory as a “gem”. China is the world’s largest market and a key market for the company, but Tesla faces fierce competition from Chinese electric car manufacturers.

The marketplace founded by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, relies heavily on Chinese sellers, who account for more than 50 per cent of the platform’s global sellers, according to data from Marketplace Pulse. (Bezos owns The Post.) Many of the products sold by the company, including those under the Amazon brand, are manufactured in China and have been affected by the administration’s tariffs.

Through its Great Firewall, China has banned or severely restricted many of the most popular American social media platforms and apps, including those run by two of the dinner guests: Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, and Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

Google launched its search engine in China in 2006, marking the start of a long-running dispute with Beijing over censorship. In 2010, following a series of cyber-attacks and disputes over the government’s demands to censor search results, the company withdrew its search engine from mainland China. Today, Google has a limited presence in the country, primarily through the sale of advertising to Chinese exporters. The company has said it intends to move the production of its Pixel phones, smartwatches and earphones out of China by next year. Google co-founder Sergey Brin also attended the dinner.

China has also blocked Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. For years, Zuckerberg had been trying to win over Chinese users. He had proposed extensive censorship measures, gone for a jog in Tiananmen Square and delivered a 20-minute speech in Mandarin at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The situation changed in 2019, when TikTok – then Chinese-owned – began to gain popularity. Zuckerberg started publicly accusing China of exporting a dangerous model of internet censorship to the rest of the world and frequently invoked the Chinese threat during his lobbying efforts with American leaders.

During his second term, Trump orchestrated a deal to suspend the TikTok ban and allow the Chinese owner to sell its US operations to a group of American investors. Jeff Yass, a Trump donor whose investment firm has a seat on the board of the new company that manages TikTok in the United States, was among the guests at Thursday evening’s dinner.

The dinner was attended by a number of key members of the Trump family and his administration, as well as some of his allies in the media.

Trump’s daughters, Ivanka and Tiffany, and his son Eric were in the East Room. Also present was his granddaughter Arabella Kushner, who, during Xi’s visit in 2017, had sung for him in Mandarin.

The key architects of the President’s policies towards China and technology dined with the Chinese delegation and other members of the government. Among them were Vice-President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.

Some media figures close to the president also received invitations, whilst the administration was at loggerheads with the television networks that had refused to broadcast Xi’s arrival after Trump had barred CNN and other media outlets from the White House. Fox News presenters Bret Baier, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters were in attendance, even though their network, along with other broadcasters, had decided not to broadcast the lavish welcome ceremony. Also present was David Ellison, chief executive of Paramount Skydance, the company that owns CBS.

The guest list also included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Trump had nominated Barrett and Kavanaugh, but had subsequently criticised both for voting against him in high-profile cases.