Here is more from The Washington Free Beacon:
The Democratic majority leader of the California state senate and officials from some of the United States's top foreign policy think tanks will speak this week at a forum organized by a group with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The China Public Diplomacy Association, a group founded by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will host the 2021 China-U.S. Public Diplomacy Summit in Beijing on Friday. The association, which has received little attention in the West, is led by several officials at Communist Party front groups. Robert Hertzberg, the majority leader of the California Senate, is slated to speak on a panel at the summit, as are scholars from the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Wilson Center, the Asia Society, and other prominent U.S. think tanks.
The forum will be held in person at Renmin University in Beijing and streamed live on the internet. The itinerary does not say which American speakers will attend the event in person and which will attend virtually.
When asked about the summit, China hawk Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said that "every think tank...should realize that meetings like these are influence operations organized by the Chinese Communist Party intended to slowly undermine America."