China’s Xi urges foreign firms to resist ‘acts that turn back the wheel of history’
Xi meets with business reps as China takes aim at unilateralism and protectionism while ramping up a charm offensive for foreign investors against the backdrop of two global conferences
In a high-profile meeting with representatives of the international business community on Friday, President Xi Jinping took aim at forces seeking to politicise trade while reassuring that “China will remain fertile land for foreign investment for a long time to come”.
His meeting was Beijing’s latest salvo in its charm offensive directed at bringing more foreign operations – and economy-driving cash – back to China, and it also represented Beijing’s pushback against external forces weighing on the economy.
Xi unloaded on unnamed “individual countries” for “politicising, instrumentalising, weaponising and pan-securitising economic and trade issues” through tariff barriers and forcing companies to “take sides and make decisions that violate economic laws”, as seen in a live YouTube broadcast of the meeting by Taiwanese media group CTi.
“I hope you can respect market laws, abide by market rules, make independent and self-reliant business decisions, and jointly promote the building of an open and stable world economic order,” he said.
Xi also said that “the nature of China-US economic and trade relations is mutually beneficial and win-win, and economic and trade frictions should be properly resolved through equal dialogue and negotiations”.
And he called on multinational companies to “speak out rationally and take pragmatic actions” to resist “acts that turn back the wheel of history”, including unilateralism and protectionism.