En route to Friday’s state dinner in his honor, Chinese President Xi Jinping stopped off in Seattle to meet with the heads of America’s great technology firms, from which China denies regularly stealing $300 billion annually in intellectual property, according to the Wall Street Journal. His goal: to lobby them to support his effort to persuade the Obama administration “not to retaliate against China for years of hacking and theft of intellectual property.”

The last national leader who lobbied America to support his country’s position on a matter before the Obama administration was Israel’s prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. Xi’s lobbying will not deter Obama from rolling out the red carpet for his Chinese counterpart, and ordering out a 21-gun salute and a dinner lavish enough to persuade Xi that we really do want to please him. In Netanyahu’s case, Obama was sufficiently annoyed with the Israeli’s efforts to lobby Americans for support on issues his guest deemed vital to Israel’s security that he left their meeting for a private family dinner without inviting Netanyahu or even arranging to have pizzas brought in for the prime minister and his delegation.