Xi Jinping Didnt Bring a CEO Entourage. What That Says About China-US Relations.

When China’s leader, Xi Jinping, traveled to the United States in 2015 for his first state visit, he took a delegation of Chinese chief executives to meet their American counterparts.Disputes over human rights, cyberattacks and trade were straining relations.But Washington and Beijing still shared an undeniable common interest: making money in each other’s markets.A decade later, the contrast with this week’s summit between President Trump and Mr.

Xi could not be more stark.No prominent Chinese chief executives attended Thursday night’s state dinner at the White House.“It’s a rather depressing marker of how bad the relationship has gotten,” said Emily Kilcrease, a senior fellow and director at the Center for a New American Security focused on the U.S.-China economic relationship.“One of the highlights of this summit was supposed to be some level of announcement of commercial deals,” said Ms.

Kilcrease, a former deputy assistant U.S.trade representative.

“But it seems like we can’t even get to agreement on some of that.”The absence of Chinese business leaders was a small but telling illustration of how thoroughly the economic relationship between the two countries has changed.In 2015, high-profile tech executives were among those traveling with Mr.

Xi, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma.Their companies were expanding rapidly, and both sides saw enormous opportunities in deeper commercial ties.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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