China’s top trade negotiator Liu He meets foreign business dignitary in Beijing for first time in two years

China’s top trade negotiator has publicly hosted a visiting foreign business guest in Beijing for the first time since the pandemic began, amid growing debate over the country’s zero-Covid approach and when the world’s second-largest economy will reopen its borders.

Chinese vice-premier Liu He, the economic right-hand man of Chinese President Xi Jinping, on Thursday met with Ben Keswick, executive chairman of Jardine Matheson in Beijing, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The visit marked Liu’s first publicly reported face-to-face meeting with a foreign business dignitary in over two years in the Chinese capital city.

The last meeting was back to November 2019, before Covid-19 began to sweep the country and the world, when Liu greeted members of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC)‘s International Advisory Council (IAC) and guests in Beijing, according to the record of public reports on the government official website.

Chinese Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua on Wednesday also met in person with Keswick in Zhongnanhai, the Beijing headquarters of the Communist Party and China’s central government, according to Xinhua. That was also Hu’s first face-to-face meeting with a visiting foreign business community representative in Beijing since November 2019.

The South China Morning Post reported earlier that Chinese vice-premier Han Zhen met with John Thornton, executive chairman of Barrick Gold Corp and a former Goldman Sachs president, in Beijing in late August. The meeting was not reported by state media.