A guest list steeped in technological prowess, the sartorial predilections of those who comprise it, the seating arrangements, their non-verbal cues throughout the evening, and the bill of fare: these constitute the softer — frequently more ostentatious — minutiae of diplomacy.

At Thursday’s state dinner they will be subjected to minute scrutiny, proffering putative intimations as to where matters veritably stand between President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping on the weightier policy questions deliberated behind closed doors.

The leaders may have devoted their business hours to deliberations over tensions concerning Taiwan, trade, and artificial intelligence — even as an ongoing First Amendment battle over press access at the White House played out.

Thereafter, however, attention shifts to the ostentatious particulars of a lavish repast held in honor of Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, in the White House's East Room.

“Everyone aspires to be present,” Trump remarked during this week’s United Nations General Assembly.

”It is the most coveted invitation in town.”

Asked on Monday night who would be in attendance, the president responded, “sort of everybody,” adding, “I would say you have the entire tech world, the entire banking world and a lot more.”

The dinner was anticipated to serve as a demonstration of “the positive vibes surrounding the visit” and to evince that “the president is very focused on signaling warmth and a close personal connection with Xi,” remarked Edgard Kagan, senior adviser and chair in China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Melania Trump’s office has stated that the first lady assisted in orchestrating the dinner, the menu for which opens with a yellow squash velouté garnished with wild mushrooms, fresh herbs, crispy pancetta, and a drizzle of scallion oil.

Thereafter, guests will be regaled with sesame-crusted sea bass, complemented by braised baby bok choy, roasted garden eggplant and a sauce verte.

To conclude, dessert comprises vanilla crémeux with sour cherry confit and walnut frangipane, alongside ice cream drizzled with honey sourced from the White House.

The dinner follows the president’s having taken the unusual step of personally greeting Xi and his wife on Wednesday upon their arrival at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington.

Customarily, presidents await their state visit guests’ arrival at the White House itself before extending a formal welcome.

For Xi’s aircraft, a crimson carpet measuring 100 feet (30 meters) in length was unfurled, flanked by a 21-member honor guard; two American children proffered bouquets of yellow blossoms to Xi and his spouse, while a thunderous flyover showcased two B-1 bombers.

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Moreover, during yet another arrival ceremony—this one convened at the White House earlier that Thursday—Trump and Xi observed servicemen parading across the South Lawn, the U.S. president remarking, “From the time of my first election in 2016 President Xi and I have forged a friendship.”

Thursday’s repast is poised to convene a veritable constellation of technology-industry potentates, among them Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Sundar Pichai of Google, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, and Michael Dell, chief executive of Dell Technologies.

During his own May visit to Beijing, Xi fêted Trump with a state dinner staged beneath the Great Hall of the People’s opulent chandeliers — an affair attended by numerous tech luminaries likely to reconvene at the White House on this occasion, among them Tim Cook, formerly Apple’s CEO, Musk, and Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive.

Trump has, in the interim, taken to designating the White House ballroom he is having constructed the “Great Hall of the United States,” conceived as a rival to the venue in which he dined in China.

“This is a remarkably capacious hall,” Trump recently remarked of the Great Hall of the People, before appending, “But we’re gonna top it.”

In 2015, as then-President Barack Obama was poised to host Xi for a state visit, Trump — in the throes of his inaugural presidential campaign — derided all the fanfare.

"Simply usher them into McDonald's and subsequently reconvene at the negotiating table," Trump remarked at the time, during a rally in South Carolina.

He later conceded on Fox News Channel that Xi might at the very least be deserving of "probably a double-size Big Mac."

Xi visited Trump in 2017 for the first time.

Yet the White House said the Chinese had sought to convene that meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, a venue regarded as more relaxed and thus potentially conducive to tempering the lofty expectations attending a formal summit in Washington.

An absence of pageantry did not, however, betoken a paucity of extraordinary moments, underscoring just how consequential it can be for China’s leader to dine with Trump.

Recounting the episode subsequently to Fox News Channel, Trump related that he had sprung a surprise upon Xi immediately following dinner, remarking that the United States was launching strikes on Syria just as the two were partaking of “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen, and President Xi was enjoying it.”

Trump recounted having apprised Xi that U.S. forces had “just fired 59 missiles,” and that China’s president “was eating his cake.

And he was silent.”