Xi’s Message in Rare Meeting With Global CEOs: Defend Trade
Globalization is an ‘unstoppable historical trend,’ Chinese leader tells foreign businesspeople
Updated March 28, 2025 The Wall Street Journal
Chinese leader Xi Jinping urged foreign business executives to defend trade and said globalization was unstoppable, drawing an implicit contrast between Beijing’s policies and President Trump’s tariffs.
In a rare meeting, the Chinese president summoned a who’s-who list of foreign executives from the likes of Pfizer, Blackstone and Mercedes-Benz to Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Friday.
“Globalization is an unstoppable historical trend,” Xi said, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Multinationals shoulder important responsibility in maintaining the world’s economic order, he told the room of about 40 executives and business-group leaders from the U.S., Europe and Asia.
He also assured them China was open for business and eager to help foreign companies thrive.
The charm offensive by Beijing toward Western companies over the past week has included tentative steps at diplomacy with the U.S. On Sunday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang met a Trump ally, Sen. Steve Daines (R., Mont.), and Daines said the meeting laid the groundwork for an in-person summit between Presidents Trump and Xi.
Beijing’s recent messaging, including at an annual forum for global executives that concluded Monday, presents China as an anchor of stability in a tumultuous world and seeks to turn foreign business leaders into allies in the fight against Trump’s tariffs.
Since he took office in January, Trump has raised tariffs twice on Chinese goods, which now face additional 20% levies on top of earlier tariffs. Both times China has retaliated.
Still, some participants at the earlier forum said it was clear that China’s openness had limits. Beijing’s drive for self-sufficiency in technology and other industries has created a skewed playing field, they said. An increase in competition from local rivals has also eaten away at foreign brands’ market share—for example, in cars.
While concerned about Trump’s tariffs, global CEOs also are uneasy about China’s economy.
Last year, China’s economic growth dropped to 5%, according to official figures, among the lowest levels in decades, and its real-estate market is mired in a multiyear slump. Foreign investment into China fell 29% in 2024 from the previous year in yuan terms, the second straight year of decline.
Friday’s gathering included American CEOs with longtime links to China such as Stephen Schwarzman of private-equity firm Blackstone and Cristiano Amon of chip maker Qualcomm. Others present included Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda, Mercedes-Benz management board chairman Ola Källenius and Georges Elhedery of HSBC.
Xi said China was committed to developing peacefully and opening its markets further to outside investment.
Sean Stein, head of the U.S.-China Business Council, attended the two-hour meeting and said participants were surprised at Xi’s level of familiarity with the business environment.
Xi responded to comments from foreign CEOs and spoke at length about potential areas of investment by foreign companies in manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, finance and technology, while acknowledging the challenges the companies face, Stein said.
“People were pleased,” he said.
During this week’s China Development Forum, a yearly gathering of foreign executives and Chinese policymakers, Chinese leaders heard some praise from foreign dignitaries about their management of the economy.
Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs blasted the U.S. and praised China’s leaders in a speech on climate change. “There’s one well-governed place in the world—that’s China,” Sachs said.
Still, Xi may find it hard to persuade foreign enterprises with his investment pitch.
“Everybody is going to hold their fire right now,” said Stephen Roach, a senior research scholar at Yale University’s law school, who attended the China Development Forum. “The level of uncertainty is very high, just in terms of what Trump is going to do and how China might retaliate.”
This January, in an annual survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China, 30% of the more than 360 respondents said they were considering or had begun moving to alternative places for manufacturing, a record high in the chamber’s 27-year survey history.
Tightening national-security restrictions and the risk of detention or arrest of staff have unnerved many foreign companies. On that front, Beijing sent a positive signal this week as news emerged that five Chinese employees of the New York-based due diligence firm Mintz Group had been released after they were detained during a raid on the company in March 2023.
Write to Liza Lin at liza.lin@wsj.com and Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com