Published March 28, 2024
- Xi Jinping on Wednesday was playing nice with US business leaders and academics on Wednesday.
- He’s seeking to boost China’s faltering economy.
- But Xi is also trying to dent US global power on several fronts.
China’s President Xi Jinping presented an uncharacteristically affable image Wednesday, smiling broadly for US business leaders at a meeting in Beijing.
The Chinese leader sought to assure investors including Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm and Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group that the downturn in China’s economy, its biggest contraction in 15 years, would be over soon.
He went on to paint a bright picture of future US-China relations, saying, according to the Xinhua state news agency.
“Whether it is traditional fields such as economy, trade and agriculture, or emerging fields such as climate change and artificial intelligence,” he said, “China and the United States should help boost each other’s development.”
Only weeks ago, Xi struck a very different tone.
In remarks to lawmakers in Beijing at the start of his third term in office, he accused the US of being the cause of China’s woes.
“Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development,” Xi said in a speech.
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SOURCE: www.businessinsider.com
RELATED: ‘No force’ can stop China’s tech progress, Xi Jinping tells Dutch PM
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shakes hands with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Published March 28, 2024
Xi’s comments come as a chip war rages between China and Western countries, including the Netherlands, which is home to ASML — the world’s sole manufacturer of extreme ultraviolet lithography machines needed to make advanced semiconductors.
“Artificially creating technological barriers and cutting off industrial and supply chains will only lead to division and confrontation,” Xi told Rutte during a meeting in Beijing on Wednesday, according to a readout published by China’s foreign ministry.
There was no mention of ASML in the readout, but the company said in January that it had been prohibited by the Dutch government from shipping some of its lithography machines to China.
That came after the United States ramped up restrictions on the types of semiconductors that American companies can sell to China and pressed its allies to enact their own.
Because of its dominance in the market, ASML has been cited by experts as a bellwether of the growing rift between China and the West over access to advanced technology.
