China Hosts WEF Bigwigs for ‘Summer Davos’

The World Economic Forum (WEF) convened the 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions (AMNC) in Tianjin, China, on Tuesday. The AMNC is billed as the “Summer Davos Forum,” a nod to the main WEF conclave held each January in Davos, Switzerland.

The 2023 AMNC was the first time the event has been held in China since the outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Tianjin, a port city with a population of about 14 million, went all-out for the event as a chance to rekindle international tourism.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang, point man for dictator Xi Jinping’s effort to persuade international investors that China will no longer cripple their operations with brutal health lockdowns or politically-motivated business crackdowns, told AMNC attendees that the world stands at a “historical crossroads” after the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

AMNC covers many of the same topics discussed at the Davos meeting, but with more of an emphasis on developing economies, and since the event is held in China, the Chinese Communist Party naturally uses it for political purposes. 

Li brought politics to the table by regaling attendees with boasts about the strength of the Chinese economy, even as China’s post-pandemic recovery sputters and fizzles in numerous ways. He also railed against all efforts by other nations to decouple their economies from China, as quoted by the state-run Global Times on Tuesday:

The strong growth of the Chinese economy will continue to provide impetus to global economic recovery with growth for the second quarter expected to register faster growth rate than in the January-March quarter, according to Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony at the forum.

De-risking and reducing interdependence is a false proposition as the global economy has already become intertwined. The so-called risk should not be the judgment of a government or an organization, but concerned companies and participants of production, Premier Li said, calling on the international community to firmly oppose the politicization of economic and trade issues and jointly maintain the stability and unimpeded flow of global industrial and supply chains.

“De-risking” is a term promoted by the European Union to describe what amounts to diversifying supply chains so that China does not control so many of them.

De-risking begins with an explicit concession that decoupling from China is no longer possible, no matter how many plagues it unleashes or human rights it violates, but even that gesture of submission was not enough for Li. China senses weakness in Europe, and Li’s speech to AMNC was just the latest bullying effort to exploit it.

The Global Times happily played up an AMNC panel discussion on Tuesday in which the director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, declared that decoupling from China “is something that the world simply cannot afford.”

As far as the Global Times was concerned, the AMNC forum conclusively eradicated all talk of diversifying away from China and put all concerns about the Chinese economy to bed. Instead, China was feted as the most important economy in the world, especially for developing nations.

The Global Times made a point of saluting the delegation from Saudi Arabia to Tianjin, a 24-strong party that included six of the Kingdom’s ministers and vice-ministers. The Financial Times saw Saudi Arabia moving ever further away from the West and into China’s orbit during the presidency of Joe Biden, who infamously vowed to make Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman into an international “pariah” during his 2020 election campaign:

Saudi Arabia is China’s biggest oil supplier, and China is the kingdom’s top trading partner, with bilateral trade of $116bn in 2022, up from $87bn the previous year. Saudi Arabia is keen to receive Chinese help to diversify its economy and wants investments beyond the traditional oil, refining and telecommunications sectors, in industries ranging from steel to internet platforms, gaming and tourism.

“Given the large size of the Arabian market, especially Saudi, this cross-border investment trend can . . . benefit Chinese companies tremendously,” said Winston Ma, a law school adjunct professor at New York University and a former managing director of Chinese sovereign fund China Investment Corporation.

… Riyadh is keen to look beyond its traditional partnership with the west and strengthen commerce with Asia, especially China. Some of the country’s biggest companies, such as PetroChina and telecommunications group Huawei, are already present in Saudi Arabia. Relations with China were strengthened by a state visit to the kingdom by Xi in December.

Deutsche Welle (DW) talked with some AMNC attendees who were impressed by China’s big show, but unconvinced that China’s economy will rebound as Li promised. Many agreed that decoupling from China would be too costly, but de-risking still looked like an appealing compromise. Some were especially worried about China taking over the electric vehicle (EV) market that Western governments spent billions to conjure into existence.

DW impishly noted that China’s attempt to sell its authoritarian politics at “Summer Davos” were not very successful: “At the entrance to the conference venue, visitors are able to pick up a copy of writings by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. There are numerous volumes, printed on glossy paper. Up until now, however, the demand has not been huge.”