Xi to visit Washington without delegation of Chinese business leaders, sources say

Open this photo in gallery:Xi Jinping walks with Donald Trump during a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, in May. The two leaders are set to meet this week.Maxim Shemetov/The Associated PressChina’s President Xi Jinping will arrive in Washington this week without the delegation of Chinese business leaders that Beijing had sought to bring for meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump, two people familiar with the matter said.Reuters reported last week that China was finalizing a group of business leaders to join Xi’s U.S. trip, potentially including companies facing U.S. regulatory scrutiny.It was not immediately clear why the proposed delegation would not attend.One source said the White House has other priorities, while a second source said U.S. officials did not want Chinese firms they believe have links to China’s military to be represented. Both sources declined to be identified because the plan was not public.Asked at a regular briefing on Wednesday whether business leaders would accompany Xi on his U.S. visit, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said: “I do not have the relevant information.”Trump and Xi to meet this week as they aim to avoid disruptions in relationshipThe White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Trump is due to host a state dinner for Xi at the White House on Thursday that U.S. company executives are expected to attend.Those expected to participate include Amazon’s AMZN-Q Jeff Bezos, Alphabet’s GOOGL-Q Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Apple’s AAPL-Q Tim Cook, Tesla’s TSLA-Q Elon Musk, Nvidia’s NVDA-Q Jensen Huang, Pfizer PFE-N CEO Albert Bourla and Meta Platforms’ META-Q Mark Zuckerberg.