Chinese Premier Li Qiang offered reassurance to global business leaders about China's economy and its steadfast opening-up, telling the China Development Forum (CDF) in Beijing that China's economy has strong resilience, vast potential and sufficient vitality, and an increasingly open China will bring more opportunities for the world. More than 110 global business leaders and scholars, including a number of U.S. executives, were in Beijing to attend the Forum on March 24-25. Many multinational executives talked about plans to expand investment in the Chinese market, with some declaring “investing in China is investing in the future.”
In a keynote speech at the opening of the CDF, Premier Li said China's economic recovery continues to consolidate and strengthen and new industries, new business models and new growth drivers continue to grow. “The Chinese economy's long-term positive fundamentals have not changed,” the Premier said. He also talked about China's steadfast pursuit of high-quality development and high-level opening-up. “An increasingly open China will definitely bring more opportunities for win-win cooperation to the world,” Li said, noting that China stands ready to share great opportunities from its continuous development, the Global Times reports.
Premier Li also said that his government is ‘carefully’ studying problems faced by businesses, including market access, public tendering and cross-border data flows. “Some of the questions have been basically resolved, and for some others we are still working on solutions to ensure a good settlement,” he said. Li told foreign investors that some opportunities lay in the power of urbanization to lift domestic consumer spending. Less than half of the Chinese population has permanent urban residency, far below the roughly 80% rate in developed economies. “The potential for raising China’s urbanization rate remains huge,” he said.
Addressing the Forum, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said low productivity growth and an aging population would dampen growth in the medium term, but China could grow considerably faster with pro-market reforms. “China faces a fork in the road – rely on the policies that have worked in the past or reinvent itself for a new era of high-quality growth,” Georgieva said, as reported by the South China Morning Post.
Hosted by the Development Research Center of the State Council since 2000, the CDF has become an important platform for exchanges between Chinese and global business leaders. The opening ceremony was attended by about 400 people, including the heads of the World Bank and the IMF. CEOs of Fortune Global 500 companies were also in attendance, including the executives of Apple, Mercedes-Benz, and HSBC. Also notable was the presence of major U.S. chip firms such as Qualcomm, Micron and AMD. Of the more than 80 executives listed, over 30 were from the U.S., or around 40% of the total, according to the Global Times. “If I compare the U.S. participation to last year's, it's probably increased two to two-and-a-half times," Stephen Orlins, President of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, told the Global Times on the sidelines of the CDF, noting that the increase is due to the end of the Covid-19 pandemic and the fact that many businesses want to understand where China's economic policies are going. Also, Orlins said that since April 2023, there have been high-level engagements between China and the U.S., and the bilateral relationship “has gotten off from the rock bottom and has improved somewhat,” though there is still a huge space for further improvement.
“For American businesses, the commitment to China and the deep engagement with the Chinese market have, in my opinion, remained unchanged over the past two or three years,” Joseph Ngai, Chairman for Greater China at global consulting firm McKinsey & Co said. The strong show of U.S. businesses at the CDF also underscored a major gap between the U.S. business community and politicians in Washington. “The business community just wants normal, good relations, so do the American people. Our politicians have a twisted mentality. They want confrontation,” Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor at Columbia University, who attended the opening ceremony of the forum, told the Global Times. Sachs also noted that Premier Li's speech was very business-like, very clear and very straightforward that China is doing well. It's going to continue to do well, and it is open for business for the world. “I thought the message was correct and very clear,” Sachs said. “I thought the speech was very helpful in understanding China's priorities for how the economy is going to continuously develop,” Timothy Creber, General Manager of China Operation of American Express, added. "So the opportunities are huge and we are very confident about the Chinese economy over the coming years.”
Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of L'Oréal, who also attended the CDF, told the Global Times that the company will continue to invest in China, believing that investing in China is investing in the future. “We believe that the next China is China – and we will continue to develop in China, for China and with China.”
China has made attracting foreign investment a top priority this year, and has taken measures to further expand market access for global businesses and improve the business environment. Last week, China's State Council issued a 24-point action plan to attract foreign investment and released the first nationwide negative list for cross-border services trade, which opens up more areas for global investors, the Global Times reports.
Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao also met with several CEOs, including Apple's Tim Cook, Qualcomm's Cristiano Amon and Visa's Ryan McInerney, underscoring China's commitment to expand high-level opening-up in a bid to boost foreign investment and provide more development opportunities for global businesses. China is accelerating the development of innovation-led new quality productive forces and has broad prospects in high-tech fields such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing, which means great opportunities for enterprises from all over the world, said Minister Wang. The high-tech industry requires close cooperation by all countries, and Qualcomm expects that the U.S. and Chinese governments can create a stable, predictable and sound business environment for companies from both countries, Amon said, noting that Qualcomm will continue to carry out innovation cooperation with its Chinese partners. Apple's Cook said that China is an important market and a key supply chain partner for Apple due to its rich talent resources and strong innovation vitality. If foreign enterprises miss the opportunities of the vast Chinese market by not setting up businesses or increasing investment, they will regret that sooner or later, Wei Jianguo, former Vice Minister of Commerce and Executive Deputy Director of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, told the Global Times.
The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2024 kicked off in Boao, Hainan province on March 26, as the “Invest China” event was also held.
