Protesters Disrupt White House State Dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping

Audible protests blared over President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump’s welcome to Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the White House Thursday night, at times drowning out the State Dinner event. Chants of “Free Hong Kong,” “Xi Jinping you’re not welcome,” and “freedom for political prisoners” were among those shouted by demonstrators gathered across Lafayette Park.

These groups, including Tibetan, Uyghur, Hong Kong democracy, Chinese pro-democracy, and Falun Gong organizations, convened in Washington to protest alleged human rights abuses by the Chinese government. Some protesters drew on a nickname previously used by President Trump for Xi Jinping, dressing as Winnie the Pooh during a demonstration outside the White House.

The State Dinner, which hosted 134 guests including prominent tech CEOs, was attended by figures such as Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Lisa Su of AMD, Tim Cook of Apple, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Google, and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. The chants remained audible, though less prominently, throughout the Marine Corps band's performance.

Among the issues of concern for the protesters was the case of Dr. Gulshan Abbas, a retired Uyghur doctor who disappeared in 2018 and was later sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges her family disputes. Fox News Digital has inquired with the White House about whether her release, or that of other political prisoners, is part of the discussions during Xi's visit.

Following the dinner, both presidents were scheduled to meet at the National Archives on Friday. The discussions between the leaders were expected to cover topics including artificial intelligence, intellectual property theft, trade practices, and rare-earth minerals.