The White House Wednesday refused to say why it kept a meeting between President Obama and Jack Ma, China’s second richest man and founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, off Obama’s public schedule this week.
“Because it was a private lunch,” Obama’s top spokesman Josh Earnest said when asked. “It’s not uncommon for the president to have a private lunch with people that you might find notable.”
While Earnest said he didn’t have a full read-out of what Obama and Ma discussed at the lunch, he said it was arranged after Obama and Ma appeared together in Malaysia last November at a forum during the Asia Economic Summit. Obama interviewed him then in front of an audience of business executives.
“After the forum, the president had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Ma and invited him to come to lunch at the White House next time he was in the area,” Earnest said. “So this is just a follow-up on that public discussion that they had.”
“As they discussed in the public forum, there are a number of common interests that they have, particularly as they relate to climate change and the international economy,” she said.
Earnest then referred to the administration’s efforts to provide greater transparency about White House visits by publicly disclosing records of White House visitor logs. Those logs, however, are not provided in real time so reporters and the public can see who has visited at the end of each day.
“Obviously those are disclosed on the … lists that are released regularly as a transparency step that no previous president has agreed to,” Earnest said. “And, in fact, the previous administration went to the Supreme Court to try to prevent the release of those lists.”
Reporters only found out that Ma had met with Obama when they saw him leaving the White House complex and getting into a black sedan.
