China’s Xi Jinping meets foreign CEOs to urge trade stability

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Xi Jinping has urged global business leaders to work together to protect supply chains at a meeting with a group of executives including Rajesh Subramaniam of FedEx and Bill Winters of Standard Chartered.

Amid a deepening trade war with the US, the Chinese leader told the group, which also included Pascal Soriot of AstraZeneca and Miguel Ángel López Borrego of Thyssenkrupp, that foreign business leaders should resist behaviours that “turn back the clock” on history.

“We hope everyone can take a broad and long-term view . . . and not blindly follow actions that disrupt the security and stability of global industrial and supply chains, but instead contribute more positive energy and certainty to global development,” Xi told the gathering in Beijing on Friday.

The event at the Great Hall of the People marked the second consecutive year that Xi held a carefully staged meeting with foreign CEOs in the Chinese capital. Last year’s event was held exclusively with US business leaders.

The meeting came at the conclusion of a busy week for Chinese policymakers, who have been making efforts to strengthen relations with international business amid rising tensions with US President Donald Trump’s administration.

China’s premier annual CEO conference, the China Development Forum, was held in Beijing earlier this week, followed by the Boao Forum for Asia in the tropical resort island of Hainan.

Beijing is trying to promote itself as a bastion of stability in global trade in contrast to the US, where Trump has launched successive waves of tariffs on products from aluminium to cars.

The president has vowed widespread, reciprocal duties on US trading partners on April 2, threatening further disruption to international trade.