Xi Jinping Hosts Personal Sit-Down with U.S. Business Leaders in Desperate Bid to Lift Chinese Economy

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping met with a group of visiting U.S. business leaders in Beijing on Wednesday, making a bid to lure much-needed foreign investment back into China’s flagging economy.

Xi promised the economy would stabilize and said overseas businessmen need not fear persecution by his authoritarian government.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) noted that Xi’s presence at the meeting was unusual because gatherings of foreign executives at the end of the annual China Development Forum are usually handled by the Chinese Communist Party’s number two man, the premier. 

The current premier, Li Qiang, has spearheaded China’s efforts to reassure foreign investors after the madness of coronavirus lockdowns and a series of heavy-handed business crackdowns.

Among other gambits, Li appeared to be in charge of welcoming exiled tech tycoon Jack Ma back into the Communist Party’s good graces after regulators wrecked his fortune and drove him out of the country in 2020. Ma’s return to China was a clear public-relations gambit to reassure foreign money that Beijing’s crackdowns were over.

Li handled the meeting with foreign executives after last year’s China Development Forum, but he apparently was not present at this year’s event, which is rather unusual. Instead, Xi put in a personal appearance on Wednesday, stressing that Beijing plans to offer more opportunities to outside investors and greater regulatory transparency.

RFA observed that foreign investment in China declined by eight percent in 2024, driven by the Chinese economy slipping to the slowest growth in almost 25 years, fear of Xi’s “raids on consultancies and due diligence firms,” a new authoritarian “anti-espionage law,” lingering anxiety over the Wuhan coronavirus disaster, political tensions between Beijing and Western governments, and a growing movement among international corporations to “de-risk” by relying less heavily on China for manufacturing.

Xi’s regime has been especially rattled by the de-risking trend, which is seeing much Western business shift to alternatives like Vietnam and India. Li tried bullying Western companies out of de-risking with threats and insults over the summer, but it did not work.

Xi took a much friendlier approach on Wednesday, promising a “better future” for relations between China and the United States and posing for chummy photos with business luminaries such as Chubb CEO Evan Greenbarg and Carlyle Group Asia Managing Director Stephen Orlins, who are representatives of an NGO devoted to improving U.S.-China relations.

Other U.S. attendees included Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon, BlackRock founder Stephen Schwarzman, FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam, and Bloomberg chairman Mark Carney.

Chinese state media portrayed Xi listening attentively to all of their concerns and responding with a promise that “China’s reforms will not pause, the opening will not stop.”

“We are planning and implementing a series of major measures to comprehensively deepen reforms, continue to build a market-oriented, legal and international first-class business environment, to provide enterprises from all over the world, including American companies, more space to develop,” Xi said.

“In the face of new situations and changes in China-US economic and trade relations in recent years, both sides must adhere to mutual respect, mutual benefit, equal consultation, act in accordance with economic laws and market rules, expand and deepen mutually beneficial economic and trade cooperation, respect each other’s development rights,” he said.

Xi’s pledges of reform and openness were accompanied by plenty of blame-shifting and thinly veiled hints of what China expects in return for rolling out the red carpet for American investors. He blamed most of the difficulties in bilateral relationships on the United States, patronizingly instructing it to “actively explore the right way to get along.” His sudden enthusiasm for playing by “market rules” was an effort to lay the groundwork for China objecting to U.S. regulations on imported electric vehicles.

Xi insisted that China’s economy is “sound and sustainable,” and is merely working through a few temporary setbacks, but Hudson Institute senior fellow Thomas J. Duesterberg said China’s economic slowdown has rattled Xi badly enough to make him desperate for foreign investment.

“I hope that behind closed doors, these CEOs have conveyed to Xi Jinping that if he wants to continue to enter the U.S. market, he must do better and allow U.S. and other foreign companies to operate in China on a reciprocal basis,” Duesterberg told RFA, echoing the complaint Xi would have heard most frequently from his guests.

Chinese state media claimed Xi’s performance was a big hit with the visiting American executives, who understood the symbolic importance of the dictator handling the meeting personally. 

“The U.S. companies appreciated China’s recent introduction of a series of important initiatives to further reform and opening-up, expressing their optimism about the prospects of the country’s economic development. They said they will unswervingly continue to explore the China market, and develop a long-term close cooperative relationship with China,” China’s state-run Global Times reported on Wednesday.

The Global Times quoted “Chinese experts” who said the American business community is eager to be friends with the People’s Republic of China and it would be “quite challenging for the U.S. government to hinder such momentum,” a veiled reference to the possibility that Donald Trump will dislodge the much more China-friendly Joe Biden from the White House in the 2024 election.

The Global Times also focused on some approving comments made by American executives, particularly Apple CEO Tim Cook, who recently declared there is “no supply chain in the world” more important to his company that China – a statement Chinese media interpreted as a sign the de-risking movement is coming to an end.

At roughly the same time Xi met with U.S. executives in Beijing, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu had a phone call with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell to discuss “international and regional issues.”

The State Department said the call was an effort to “responsibly manage competition in the relationship” between America and China. Campbell “underscored the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, in the South China Sea, and on the Korean peninsula,” and also “raised concerns” about China’s support for the Russian war machine.