Two of the Chinese companies under consideration for Xi Jinping's delegation to Thursday's White House state dinner sit on the Pentagon's list of firms it links to China's military. CATL was added in January 2025. BYD was added in June.
Reuters reported last week that Xi planned to bring companies facing US sanctions, blacklists or regulatory pressure, and that China's commerce ministry was the one contacting them. So the companies weren't deciding whether to go. A ministry was calling them.
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Xi will probably arrive for his first Washington visit in 11 years without an executive delegation at all, citing people familiar with the plans, who said things could still change. NPR had earlier reported that Beijing asked for more than half of the roughly 100 seats at the dinner to fit its business leaders, and that the White House pushed back.
The 2015 visit is the comparison I keep coming back to. Jack Ma traveled with Xi to Washington state that September and stood in the group photo at a tech forum alongside Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos. In October 2020, Ma gave a speech in Shanghai criticizing China's financial regulators. Beijing halted what would have been Ant Group's record stock listing days later, and Ma dropped out of public view for nearly three months.
A Chinese founder on a state trip is not a free agent pitching American investors. He sits at the table because the Chinese Communist Party put him there, and on this trip, by one source's account, Beijing wanted that table to include companies the Pentagon has flagged for military ties.
Asked about the delegation, China's foreign ministry told the Journal it had no information to provide.