The two-day China Development Forum ended on Monday, but a handful of US corporate luminaries decided to stick around in Beijing for an extra 48 hours. And not because they were enjoying the scenery.

At some point — late last week, presumably — the Party sent around a formal invitation to visiting executives including Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and FedEx’s Raj Subramaniam. The hand-written summons, tucked snugly into ornate envelopes sealed with bright red wax, were delivered on silver platters by teams of smartly-dressed pandas. “A top Chinese leader requests your audience,” the biddings read.

I’m just joking. Sort of. The Party did send around formal invites. And they (the invites) did say “top Chinese leader” rather than Xi Jinping, leaving executives to surmise the emperor, apparently in keeping with recent (absurd) precedent.

As Bloomberg noted, there was “a tacit understanding that the meeting [would] be with Xi [as] a similar procedure was followed in November,” when the US rolled out the red carpet for a dictator in San Francisco. Not wanting to disappoint the Party, some of America’s foremost business chiefs “rejigg[ed] their long-planned schedules,” as Bloomberg put it, in order to accommodate Xi.

For their trouble, America’s busy CEOs learned that “the history of Sino-US relations is one of friendly exchanges between the two peoples,” Xi declared, lecturing from behind a tall bouquet of flowers in the Great Hall of the People. “The past was written by the people, and the future must be created by the people,” he went on, as Schwarzman and the rest smiled, nodded and scribbled notes like acquiescent school children. “It is hoped that people from all walks of life in the two countries will have more contacts and exchanges and continue to accumulate consensus,” Xi said.

That’s all according to a short video of the meeting, set to soft violin music and published by state broadcaster CCTV. There were around three dozen comments on the accompanying “article” (all ~75 words of it) ostensibly posted by different readers. Quite a few of them said exactly the same thing: “Good! Thumbs up for the people’s beloved Chairman Xi!”

I know what you’re thinking. Or what you’re wondering: My God, are America’s top business minds that stupid? They canceled or rescheduled important meetings around the world in order to serve as props in a Communist Party propaganda video?!

I have some potentially distressing news: Yes. Yes, they’re that ignorant. Or else that pusillanimous, and I’m not sure which is worse.

They (the business figures) wouldn’t put it that way, of course. They’d tell you about their solemn duty to protect and advance the interests of the companies they lead, and how they’d be derelict in that regard if they didn’t take a rare opportunity to query the increasingly reclusive leader of the world’s second-largest economy at a pivotal juncture. I’d tell you that’s not wrong, but it is ironic: Advancing the interests of American capitalism now entails flattering a communist dictator who styles himself a reincarnated Mao.

These special-invite, tightly controlled audiences with Xi look poised to supplant more traditional channels of communication with the Party. China initially named no keynote speaker for this year’s development forum, The Wall Street Journal noted last week. Although Premier Li Qiang ended up addressing the event, he spoke only “briefly” to visiting CEOs, according to Bloomberg’s account, marking a “break with tradition.” Typically, there’s a formal meeting.

Earlier this month, Xi did away with another tradition: For at least three decades, China’s No. 2 (currently Li) held a press conference following the National People’s Congress. Xi nixed this year’s presser. Indeed, he appeared to nix all NPC premier press conferences in perpetuity.

Despite looking quite a bit like a monologue, the Western financial media characterized Xi’s Wednesday meeting with US CEOs as an “open and frank” dialogue. Amusingly, Mark Carney attended on behalf of Bloomberg, where he was named chairman last year.

Harvard’s Graham Allison, who had a “heavy schedule of meetings” with Xi’s foreign policy team this week, said Xi was keen to emphasize that the US and China should avoid a Thucydides Trap. Allison, a known quantity in foreign policy circles for decades, coined the phrase, which is now in regular usage in the context of a prospective war between the world’s two superpowers.

Xi also acknowledged China’s economic challenges, which he assured attendees the Party’s capable of addressing and overcoming.