China's President Xi Jinping has met with a group of American business executives in Beijing. Participants to the meeting included Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman and Qualcomm's Cristiano Amon. China appears to be ramping up outreach to foreign investors as it seeks to achieve an annual growth target of around 5%.

Beijing

China's President Xi Jinping recently conducted a meeting with a group of American business executives in Beijing. Among the participants were notable figures such as Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, and Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm. The meeting is part of China's broader initiative to attract foreign investors. This effort is aimed at reaching the country's annual growth target of approximately 5%.



Xi meets with U.S. CEOs in Beijing

Well, the China Development Forum, as you very well know, Tom, in your days in Beijing, is an annual meeting that was kind of put on hold a little bit through the pandemic, obviously, COVID zero. So this is a reacquainted kind of tour of U.S. and other international executives to come to China, not only to the CDF, the China Development Forum in the Diaoyutai State Guest House in central Beijing and meeting with senior Beijing leaders, but also down here, some 2700 kilometers to the south on the island of Hainan for the annual Boao Forum. I haven't been here in five years because of all those constraints that I talked about because of COVID zero. So there's another get reacquainted kind of tour for myself and for these executives. But up at the CDF, we had gotten wind last night that there was be a senior leader. And that obviously means Xi Jinping was going to be meeting the U.S. delegation, not only of business executives, but also from academia. And sure enough, it happened today. We don't know the precise details of the talk. We do know that at least Blackstone Steve Schwarzman was a participant. We're still trying to get confirmation of others. But we do know that Apple's Tim Cook was there for the CDF. We know that Pfizer's Albert Bourla was there. Also, the heads of FedEx and also Chubb, a number of other executives were there meeting with Chinese officials. But keep in mind, Tom, usually at the CDF, they meet with the premier. This time again, Li Chang was sort of sidelined. He didn't have the meeting with them, much like we saw at the National People's Congress. Li Chang did not have his annual press conference. It was Xi Jinping who came in today and met face to face with the U.S. executives. Yeah, that's interesting context, isn't it? You are obviously on the ground, Steve, and you've been conversing. You've been speaking to CEOs and leaders from U.S. companies, other companies as well. What is the sense? Are they convinced that China really is making this effort now? How much conviction is there amongst business leaders that China is still a place to invest and do business? I think the fact that they made the effort to come here indicates their level of interest. I do think that the companies that we've spoken to today, obviously Fortescue Metals, Andrew Forrest, as well as Pascal Sorio of AstraZeneca, they are investing heavily in China and have been through the pandemic and in years before. AstraZeneca, some six billion dollars investing into seven different Chinese biopharmaceutical companies over the last 12 months. They are in for the long haul, as is Fortescue Metals. So they are just coming to reestablish those commercial ties that might have had a pause a bit during the pandemic and also kind of reassess the policy direction right now because there's been, let's face it, opacity in policy and clarification. They want clarification on where the Chinese leadership, while on the one hand they're saying they're going to be tightening their belts this year fiscally, on the other side they're going to be investing heavily in new technologies, new productive forces, is what Xi Jinping talks about. But we need more clarity on what that exactly means. Is it going to be bifurcated, new productive forces only for Chinese made chips, only for AI, only for those supply chains within China, or is there participation available for global participants? There's a lot of questioning and answering going on.

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Windsor

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Council of the City of Sydney

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Baku

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London

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Paris

Israel-Gaza War

Pro-Palestinian protesters still occupying Sciences Po campus

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Nairobi

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New York

U.S. Presidential Election

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Marsden Park

Mourners farewell Bondi security guard Faraz Tahir

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Washington

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Jerusalem

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Port-au-Prince

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Beirut

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Doha

Ukraine Invasion

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Geographe

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Kokoda

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Wakeley

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Sderot

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Pyongyang

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Berlin

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