Full List of Business Leaders Said to Have Spent $40K To Dine With Xi

U.S. executives spent $40,000 to dine with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a business dinner in California on Wednesday.

The Chinese politician is attending the annual meeting of 21 Pacific nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, this week.

According to The New York Times, tickets for a dinner and reception after the summit while executives could spend $40,000 to sit on Xi's table, although that price also included eight seats at another table.

As per a Bloomberg News report, the top executives who sat at the Chinese leader's table included:

Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

Gina Raimondo, U.S. Commerce Secretary

Nicholas Burns, U.S. Ambassador to China

Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates

Peng Zhao, CEO of Citadel Securities

CNBC reports that Wang Wentao, Chinese minister of commerce was also at the table.

The Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party also shared images on X purporting to show the list of others invited to the dinner. As well as listing some of the above executives, the committee, run by Republican Representative Mike Gallagher, said the following executives were present:

Stanley Deal, CEO of Boeing

Merit Janow, former dean of Columbia University

Milind Pant, CEO of Amway

Darius Adamcyzk, chairman and former CEO of Honeywell

Hock Tan, CEO of Broadcom

Robert Goldstein, COO of BlackRock

Joseph Bae, co-CEO of KKR

Daniel O'Day, CEO of Gilead Sciences

Ming Hsieh, managing director of Fulgent Genetic

Newsweek has contacted all of the reported attendees and the APEC summit by email for comment on this story and has not yet confirmed the authenticity of this list.

Attendees ate a starter of vegetable salad followed by steak and sweet potato puree or vegetable curry, according to a menu posted on X, formerly Twitter, by Demetri Sevastopulo, U.S.-China correspondent at the Financial Times. They also had fruit tart and a selection of wines.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of X, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff were also at the event, too. CNBC reports that Musk did not stay for the dinner.

The dinner was hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, which aims to foster a better understanding between the countries, and the U.S.-China Business Council, which promotes trade. Newsweek contacted these organisations by email to comment on this story.

At a speech made at the dinner, which Xi attended after an afternoon of talks with President Joe Biden aimed at improving relations between the two countries, the Chinese leader said he and Biden had "reached important consensus" in promoting travel between the U.S. and China.

The leaders of the world's two largest economies had not met since the G20 summit in Bali last November.

He added: "China is ready to be a partner and friend of the United States. The fundamental principles that we follow in handling China-U.S. relations are mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation."

Meanwhile, more than 100 anti-Xi protesters gathered near the summit site on Wednesday. "We can say beyond a reasonable doubt that this will be the largest anti-Xi protest during the bilateral talks hosted here in the United States in the history of Xi Jinping's time as a dictator of China," Pema Doma, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, told Reuters early in the day.

Update 11/16/23, 8a.m. ET: This article was updated with further details of those said to have attended the event.