Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met with a group of global business leaders in Beijing in an effort to boost investor sentiment as rising tariffs fuel uncertainty about the economy and international trade.
Xi sat down with representatives of international industrial and business firms at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing yesterday morning, Xinhua news agency reported, without elaborating.
They included Rajesh Subramaniam of FedEx Corp, Bill Winters of Standard Chartered PLC, Paul Hudson of Sanofi SA, Pascal Soriot of AstraZeneca PLC and Miguel Angel Lopez Borrego of ThyssenKrupp AG.
Photo: Reuters
Officials in attendance included Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao (王文濤) and Minister of Finance Lan Foan (藍佛安).
After the meeting, Xi said in front of reporters that seven business representatives shared their views that the Chinese government would “study and consider.”
“All of you are welcome to keep your lines of communication with us,” Xi said, praising the attendees for contributing to China’s growth and creating job opportunities.
“Foreign businesses are important participants in China’s modernization,” he added.
Slowing economic expansion and mounting geopolitical tensions have hurt the appeal of investing in the world’s second-biggest economy, with inbound investment tumbling last year to its lowest in more than three decades.
More headwinds might come next month, when the US is set to complete a review of Beijing’s compliance with the phase-one trade deal struck during US President Donald Trump’s first term and impose reciprocal duties globally.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強) on Sunday said that the country is prepared for “shocks that exceed expectations,” as the government targets an ambitious growth target of about 5 percent this year.
Economists estimate that Beijing would need to unleash trillions of yuan in stimulus to hit that goal if tariffs surge.
China’s interaction with the top business figures underscores the message it has been sending that the nation is open for business — contrasting itself with Trump’s more protectionist “America first” policies.
Beijing is also trying to cast itself as a supporter of private enterprise, illustrated by Xi’s meeting last month with entrepreneurs such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) cofounder Jack Ma (馬雲).
Many global chief executive officers had traveled to China for the annual China Development Forum and the Boao Forum for Asia, which concluded yesterday.
The meeting marked an upgrade from earlier years when China’s No. 2 official met executives on the sidelines of the China Development Forum, although Xi broke precedent last year to meet with a group of US businesspeople.
US Senator Steve Daines, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met with several Chinese leaders, including Li, earlier this week, in what has been seen as an initial step to set up a summit between Xi and Trump.
Several US firms have already been caught in the crossfire of deteriorating bilateral relations.
Chinese authorities summoned Walmart Inc executives this month over reports it asked suppliers to bear rising costs incurred by increased US tariffs.
Beijing earlier placed Calvin Klein owner PVH Corp and US gene sequencing company Illumina Inc onto a so-called blacklist of entities as US tariffs took effect.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
RSS