Top CEOs like Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, and 23 other executives gathered today in Redmond, Wash., to meet with China President Xi Jinping at the conclusion of the eighth annual U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum.  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has gushed about his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, calling it a “personal milestone”, after he spoke in Mandarin to Xi at an event on Wednesday. “On a personal note, this was the first time I’ve ever spoken with a world leader entirely in a foreign language,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page about the conversation that lasted less than a minute. “It was an honour to meet President Xi and other leaders,” Zuckerberg’s post read, adding that internet users could follow updates of the president’s first state visit to the United States on the Facebook page “Xi’s US Visit”.
– One way to get the head of Apple to visit the Microsoft campus: Tell him it's picture day with the president of China. Tim Cook and other technology bigwigs—including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Alibaba's Jack Ma—gathered yesterday in Redmond, Wash., for a meeting with Xi Jinping, who's in the US on his first state visit, reports Quartz. While they were there, Xi and the group of 29 high-level US and Chinese tech execs posed for what the site calls "an awkward class photo of super powerful people" that showed, more or less, what it would look like if "the tech world had an All-Star Game," as GeekWire puts it. After touring Microsoft's executive building with Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella and watching high-tech demos, Xi smiled for the camera with the others. Zuckerberg (who Quartz points out does, indeed, own a suit) greeted Xi by speaking to him briefly in Mandarin, the South China Morning Post reports. "On a personal note, this was the first time I've ever spoken with a world leader entirely in a foreign language," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. "I consider that a meaningful personal milestone. It was an honor to meet President Xi and other leaders." One of those leaders was Lu Wei, the Chinese Internet chief responsible for setting up the country's firewall and keeping Zuckerberg's site out—a point not lost on commenters to Zuckerberg's post. "He banned Facebook in China. He doesn't deserve to meet u man," wrote one.