Beijing
\nCapping a week of courting the world\u2019s top CEOs, China\u2019s President Xi Jinping on Friday made one of his most impassioned defences yet of international trade, as the system of globalised supply chains that helped catapult China to economic superpower status teeters on the brink.
\nJust days before Donald Trump\u2019s self-declared \u201cliberation day\u201d on April 2, when the US president is set to unleash a new wave of tariffs on America\u2019s trading partners, a smiling Xi led a group of more than 40 global business leaders into an ornate room in Beijing\u2019s Great Hall of the People.
\nWithout naming the US, Xi told his guests, who ranged from HSBC\u2019s Georges Elhedery and Mercedes-Benz\u2019s Ola K\u00e4llenius to Saudi Aramco\u2019s Amin Nasser and Toyota\u2019s Akio Toyoda, that some countries were \u201cweaponising\u201d trade and \u201cforcing companies to take sides and make choices that go against economic principles\u201d.
\n\u201cWe must jointly maintain the multilateral trading system, jointly maintain the stability of the global industrial chain,\u201d he said.
\nThe meeting with the business leaders followed a week in which China hosted its most important annual business summits: the China Development Forum in Beijing and the Boao Forum for Asia in the tropical resort island of Hainan.
\nThe message at both was that, compared with Trump\u2019s chaotic policymaking, Beijing was a bastion of stability and a champion of the global trading system from which it \u2014 arguably more than any other country \u2014 had benefited and upon which it was still heavily reliant.
\nTrump has threatened to impose sweeping \u201creciprocal\u201d tariffs on America\u2019s trading partners on Wednesday. The US is due on Tuesday to conclude extensive investigations into its trade with China as well as Beijing\u2019s industrial policy, subsidies and diversion of trade through other countries.
\nAnalysts said many foreign trading partners have soured on China in recent years, accusing it of running up huge surpluses while erecting barriers to its domestic market. But Trump\u2019s threats to globalisation have made international business more receptive to Beijing\u2019s message.
\n\u201cChina after all is quite stable \u2014 there are no surprises in policymaking,\u201d said Denis Depoux, global managing director at consultancy Roland Berger, who attended the Beijing and Bo\u2019ao forums. \u201cMaybe because the rest of the world has become chaotic, so China looks better than before.\u201d
\nAt the annual meeting of China\u2019s rubber stamp parliament this month, leaders sought to shore up that image of stability with an ambitious GDP annual growth target of 5 per cent, backed by plans for a record central government budget deficit.
\n\u201cIf you\u2019re wanting to ask about China and its place in the globe, in the world, what I\u2019m witnessing is a quiet resoluteness, that they believe they\u2019re on the right path,\u201d said Andrew Forrest, the Australian mining billionaire who also attended both forums.
\n\u201cNo matter the changes in the external environment, China will open wider to the world,\u201d vice-premier Ding Xuexiang, a member of the elite standing committee of the Communist party\u2019s governing politburo, assured those gathered in Bo\u2019ao.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beijing Capping a week of courting the world\u2019s top CEOs, China\u2019s President Xi Jinping on Friday made one of his most impassioned defences yet of international trade, as the system of globalised supply chains that helped catapult China to economic superpower status teeters on the brink. Just days before Donald Trump\u2019s self-declared \u201cliberation day\u201d on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-469953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n