NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {A} s the U.S. and China approach the first in-person meeting between the countries’ two leaders since the spy-balloon incident led to a diplomatic rupture, a prestigious American nonprofit is taking center stage.

That group is the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations (NCUSCR). The decades-old organization represents top business leaders, academics, and former government officials in pursuit of a core mission: fostering closer ties and mutual understanding between Beijing and Washington — often by giving a platform to Chinese leaders, including Xi Jinping. It was around for the normalization of ties between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China in the 1970s, and it continues to attract high-level officials from both countries to its events, despite the broader downturn in diplomatic ties. Its ex-chairman, former treasury secretary Jack Lew, was confirmed as U.S. ambassador to Israel last month.

Now, NCUSCR is expected to host Xi next week for a dinner on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit after an expected meeting between Xi and President Biden, the New York Times reports. Tickets for the San Francisco event reportedly will cost $2,000. NCUSCR is hosting it with the U.S.–China Business Council, in conjunction with the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Asia Society. NCUSCR did not comment on the dinner when reached by National Review.

Xi’s expected visit to the U.S. follows a full-court diplomatic press by Biden-administration officials — and the NCUSCR event would also be the culmination of a devoted diplomatic initiative of sorts.

In furtherance of those efforts, NCSUCR president Steve Orlins, already a frequent interlocutor with top Chinese officials, has held a dizzying series of meetings and dialogues with China’s leadership.

In 2023, he has met the Chinese Communist Party’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, at least three times, twice in Beijing (the first of those meetings was within a month of the spy-balloon incident) and then once in Washington last month when the Chinese official was in town for talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national-security adviser Jake Sullivan, and Biden. And he met Vice President Han Zheng on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly high-level debate, as part of a group that included other business organizations.

“I learned in college from Chairman Mao, ‘In times of difficulty we must not lose sight of our achievements, must see the bright future and must pluck up our courage,’” Orlins recently said, speaking about the importance of maintaining constructive U.S.–China ties.

He made the comments during a speech at the committee’s annual gala in October, an event that also featured a discussion between basketball stars Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady about the importance of “people-to-people” ties. Suggesting that Beijing is ready to resume contact with the Biden administration at the highest possible level, Xi addressed a congratulatory letter to NCUSCR for the event last month in Manhattan. A video clip of Orlins’s comments was also boosted by a Chinese diplomat known for her strident anti-U.S. commentary on social media.

NCUSCR was also looking to bring Chinese-embassy staff members to Capitol Hill before the plans fell through. That’s noteworthy given Congress’s hawkish tilt on China issues and also because the embassy has approached congressional offices in a clumsy manner, at times threatening members of Congress and their staffers. In one case that National Review reported, the embassy directed one congressional aide to conduct outreach to other aides on its behalf, a strange arrangement that led to her firing.

The Chinese-embassy session was planned as the final component of a program this fall centered on China’s relations with Latin America and Africa and slated to take place after the penultimate session on October 27, according to an email inviting congressional staff members to participate that was obtained by NR.

But a spokesperson for NCUSCR told NR that “the idea was suggested by congressional staffers, discussed as a possibility, but was ultimately not pursued,” adding that “no such briefing was conducted.” This person did not say why or when the plan for a Chinese-embassy briefing was abandoned nor why it was initially pitched to congressional staff in a promotional email. The Chinese embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

Mark Simon, the longtime adviser to and friend of Hong Kong pro-democracy icon Jimmy Lai, strongly criticized NSCUSCR’s efforts to connect congressional aides with Chinese officials, accusing the organization of “dishonesty” for describing itself as an educational group. “When did it become okay for 501c’s to set meetings between U.S. Senate staffers and Chinese diplomats and spies from the Chinese embassy?” he wrote in a message to NR, claiming that it’s unlikely the embassy would not send spies to such a meeting.

NCUSCR programs that sought to foster interactions between congressional staffers and Chinese officials have in recent years faced noteworthy difficulties, including the Covid pandemic and increased congressional skepticism about finding areas of cooperation with Beijing.

Senator Marco Rubio told NR that the party uses influence efforts to hide the fact that “everything the regime does is designed to weaken America.” Speaking about the initial plans for the meeting, he said, “This is yet another example of the Chinese Communist Party exploiting our open system to advance its agenda.”

During the Covid pandemic, NCUSCR set up “virtual delegations” involving videoconference sessions instead. These briefing programs, focused on a range of topics including security, energy, and trade, had regularly featured interactions with officials from China’s embassy in Washington and from its ministries back in Beijing, emails about programming in 2021 and 2022 show.

“At a time of significant bilateral tensions, further complicated by Covid travel restrictions that make in-person delegations currently impossible, it is our firm belief that virtual delegations like this one provide an invaluable service by helping to maintain dialogue between Congress and key entities in China,” one of these messages stated.