Chinese President Xi Jinping was in no mood to grant favors at his White House state dinner — not even for Mark Zuckerberg’s unborn baby.
Among the many tech and media titans who were invited, a few who came to kiss Xi’s ring at the Sept. 25 dinner hosted by President Obama and First Lady Michelle also asked for something in return.
Zuckerberg spoke to Xi in Mandarin and asked if he would do him and wife Priscilla the honor of giving the baby she is expecting an honorary Chinese name.
Xi’s terse reply: “No.” While a spokesperson for Zuckerberg told us, “This was not correct,” a second source insisted that Xi did decline to nominate a name for the Facebook founder’s unborn baby girl and politely added that it would be “too much responsibility.”
However, Zuckerberg wasn’t the only mogul in the room who had a request turned down by a stone-faced Xi, with others boldly asking for business-focused favors.
Zuckerberg, who was seated at the head table with the Obamas, the Chinese president and his wife, Peng Liyuan, is trying to persuade Beijing to lift a ban on Facebook. Presumably, he wasn’t brave enough to ask for that favor over dinner.
Two days earlier, Zuckerberg had met with Xi at the US-China Internet Industry Forum in Seattle and wrote on his Facebook wall, “On a personal note, this was the first time I’ve ever spoken with a world leader entirely in a foreign language. I consider that a meaningful personal milestone. It was an honor to meet President Xi and other leaders.”
Other guests at the state dinner included Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, which sells millions of iPhones in China; Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, which wants China to approve sales of its latest operating system, Windows 10; Oracle’s Larry Ellison; DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg; American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Misty Copeland; and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.