SAN FRANCISCO – The hottest ticket in town this week is a dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

American corporate chieftains are paying thousands of dollars, United States media reports say, to attend an event organised by the non-profit National Committee on US-China Relations and the US-China Business Council. 

The lure is an opportunity to take a measure of Mr Xi, who is setting foot on American soil for the first time in the Biden presidency.

He is widely expected to make a pitch – and American businesses will be all ears – for more investment into the Chinese economy, which is on a markedly slower track after a listless post-pandemic recovery and seeing an outflow of capital and declining foreign direct investment.

The dinner will take place after the two presidents hold their first meeting in a year on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum leaders’ summit on Wednesday. Both are slated to fly into San Francisco on Tuesday.

A business leader who expects to attend the gala event told The Straits Times he thinks Mr Xi will put out the welcome mat. But US businesses, he added, will need more than just words.

“Yes, it’s a hot ticket for many reasons,” said Mr Charles Freeman, the senior vice-president for Asia at the US Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business federation representing thousands of large and small firms.

“It’s the first time that Xi has been in the US in a while, and in a public setting. For business communities, he’s a big customer of ours.

“Anytime the Chinese president is here, there’s a desire to demonstrate interest in the well-being and future of the relationship.”

On what he expects Mr Xi to say, Mr Freeman said: “Essentially, words of encouragement. That it’s safe to come back in the water, as it were.”

But there will be greater scrutiny of Mr Xi’s words, given the uncertainty in the Chinese political economy.

“There’s a lot of premium being placed on tangible actions right now by the US business community that demonstrate more than just positive comments,” he said.

In August, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said US companies had complained to her that China has become “uninvestable”, mentioning fines, raids and other actions that made it risky to do business there. 

The percentage of US firms which say they are optimistic about the five-year China business outlook has fallen to 52 per cent, according to an annual survey published in September by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. This was the lowest recorded since the survey began in 1999.

Direct investment by foreign companies in China in the April to June quarter totalled US$4.9 billion (S$6.67 billion) – an 87 per cent decrease on the year and the largest drop since 1998 – according to Chinese government data.

“Understanding exactly where Xi Jinping is directing the next round of opening – or will there be a new round of opening? – is a matter of great import to the business community,” said Mr Freeman.

Included among the dinner invitees are some Iowa residents who have known Mr Xi since his first visit to the US as the 31-year-old leader of a food processing delegation from China’s Hebei province in 1985.

Mutual suspicion now colours nearly every aspect of the US-China relationship, whether in their military encounters in the sea or air in the South China Sea, the exports of advanced technology or critical minerals, or their scanty cooperation on global issues like the Ukraine war or climate change.

Their once-celebrated bilateral trade and investments have not been spared. 

But with Mr Xi’s visit, a sliver of hope has emerged that both sides will take care to ensure that the raised hackles do not spill into accidental war. 

Mr Xi, who in March said Washington was intent on containing China, in October told visiting Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that there were “1,000 reasons to make China-US relations work well”.

Ahead of the leaders’ meeting on Wednesday, China’s state-backed Global Times cited an analyst saying that “solid conditions” have been formed for the leaders’ meeting to achieve some positive outcomes.

“Such a positive outcome will offer stable expectations for the world economy,” it quoted Dr Mei Xinyu, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, as saying.

On that, at least, observers on both sides see eye to eye.

“The presidents’ meet is an important signal not just for the bilateral relationship, but for the direction of where the rest of the world is going,” Mr Freeman said.

“From the business community’s perspective, the thing we’re looking for is recognition that the business relationship is important to both governments and that the role of the private sector is going to continue to be not just tolerated but welcomed.”