China hands out olive branch via Apple, Facebook and Tesla ahead of Trump’s Asia visit
Xi spoke to business advisers of Tsinghua University’s business school, including Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Xi Jinping, a week into his second five-year term as China’s president, outlined a vision of openness, mutually beneficial cooperation and delicate diplomacy with the outside world, choosing to sound his thoughts out at a gathering of foreign business advisers in the country’s most prestigious university.
“China’s development offers opportunities for the world,” Xi said, according to a transcript by state news agency Xinhua. China’s economic reform is not a zero-sum game of “winners and losers, but about creating win-win situations through cooperation,” he said.
The Chinese president’s message was delivered to an audience that included Americans that make up the who’s who of US business and industry. Specifically, Xi had in his mind Donald Trump, whose administration refused on Monday to qualify China as a market economy, taking to scold America’s second-biggest trading partner days before the US president is due for his first visit to China since taking office.