US-China Summit Photo: All-Male Table Draws Sharp Critique
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- Trump and Xi Jinping met at Beijing's Great Hall of the People on Thursday in a bilateral featuring choreographed military displays, flag-waving children, and rows of senior officials — but no women from either delegation were seated at the table.
- Gita Gopinath, a Harvard economics professor, posted a tweet (garnering 22,000+ likes overnight) calling the photo 'A painting of the end of meritocracy' and telling the Guardian it reflected a system where 'your network and not your capabilities' determines who gets a seat.
- Halima Kazem, Stanford's associate director for feminist, gender and sexuality studies, said the single-gender table was 'a choice about what kind of authority to project: masculine, militarized, and exclusionary' — a joint signal from both superpowers about who belongs in serious diplomacy.
- Obama-era US-China summits included women like Liu Yandong (China's then vice-premier), Susan Rice (national security adviser), and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — a contrast Kazem cited to argue 'we've gone backward.'
- Despite the table's composition, a handful of women did accompany Trump on his two-day Beijing visit, including daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, and Meta president Dina Powell McCormick.
Why it matters: The image of the world's two largest economies negotiating without a single woman at the table is a deliberate diplomatic signal: both Beijing and Washington chose to project a specific kind of authority, one that scholars say redefines what 'serious' great-power diplomacy looks like and who is excluded from it.
