IS IT A CHINESE THING ?

 

GROK:

Yes, the all-male table at the main Trump-Xi bilateral meeting has drawn a lot of attention and criticism online and in the media.
A widely circulated photo from the Great Hall of the People showed only men seated for the core talks, with no women from either side visible at the negotiating table. Quick breakdown of the delegations

• U.S. business delegation (17 top executives invited by Trump): Only 2 women — Jane Fraser (Citi CEO) and Dina Powell McCormick (Meta president). The rest (including Musk, Cook, Huang, Fink, etc.) were men.
• U.S. official/adviser side: Almost entirely male (e.g., Rubio, Hegseth, Bessent). Women who traveled were mostly in support/comms/protocol roles or family (Lara Trump, etc.). Notably, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and First Lady Melania Trump did not attend.
• Chinese side: Even fewer women in the visible leadership entourage. Xi’s inner circle and senior officials (e.g., Wang Yi, Cai Qi) were all male. No women appeared at the main table in official photos or readouts.

Some women were in Beijing (the two U.S. CEOs and a handful of staff/family), but they weren’t part of the core bilateral meeting optics.Is it “a Chinese thing”?It’s more accurate to say it reflects entrenched patterns on the Chinese side, amplified by choices on the U.S. side.

• China’s leadership is exceptionally male-dominated at the top:
  • The Politburo (24 members) has zero women — the first time in 25 years (since the 20th Party Congress in 2022).
  • The Politburo Standing Committee (the real decision-making core) has never had a woman.
  • Senior CCP and State Council roles are overwhelmingly male (<8% women in top leadership overall, despite women being ~49% of the population).
  • This isn’t new; it’s a long-term feature of CCP politics, and female representation at the highest levels has actually declined under Xi.
  High-level Chinese state delegations and summits routinely look like this because the people in those power positions are almost all men. It’s not an explicit “protocol” banning women, but a direct result of how the Party selects and promotes leaders.
• The U.S. side isn’t blameless here either:
  • Trump’s selection of the business delegation was heavily skewed male (only 2 out of 17 women executives). Critics noted that other prominent female CEOs with major China exposure (e.g., GM’s Mary Barra, AMD’s Lisa Su) were not invited.
  • This wasn’t the first time — his previous China visit had zero women executives.
  • The official U.S. team followed a similar pattern.

Bottom line: The optics were a joint production. China’s side is the more systemic, structural issue rooted in CCP governance and patriarchal political culture.
The U.S. delegation choices made it stand out even more. It’s not unique to this summit (similar critiques have come up in past high-level U.S.-China meetings), but the photo crystallized the conversation about gender and power in top-tier diplomacy.
Media and academics have called it everything from “end of meritocracy” to a deliberate “masculine, militarized” display. Whether that framing resonates depends on your view of how delegations are assembled — merit, networks, politics, or optics.

Either way, the absence was real and widely noticed.