Chinese President Xi Jinping met with more than 40 top global executives in Beijing on Friday and told them directly to put their money in China, while trade pressure from the United States kept climbing.
He said foreign companies needed to work with China, not pull away, as the country tries to lock down economic partnerships during rising tensions with Washington. Xi told the business leaders, “To invest in China is to invest in tomorrow,” during a closed-door roundtable, translated by CNBC.
He also said that multinational corporations had a duty to “uphold global order” and that China would now make sure foreign companies get fair treatment in government procurement bids. The meeting happened while Trump is still hiking tariffs, blacklisting Chinese tech companies, and demanding that ByteDance sell off TikTok’s U.S. business.
Xi meets top executives as Trump cranks up pressure on China
The executives who met Xi on Friday included Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, Bill Winters from Standard Chartered, and Stephen Schwarzman from Blackstone. All of them already have big financial stakes in China. The meeting was packed with senior Chinese officials too.
Politburo Standing Committee member Cai Qi, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and Vice Premier He Lifeng all sat in. So did top brass from China’s finance ministry, commerce ministry, and economic planning agency.
Seven of the CEOs spoke before Xi gave his closing remarks. Xi responded to each person by name and commented on the company’s work in China, said Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Orlins added that all the firms present were already operating in the country.
The Beijing government is not going after the U.S. with immediate trade retaliation. Instead, it’s trying to tighten relationships with business leaders from overseas.
Just days before the roundtable, Beijing hosted a major state-backed business event. That one ran from Sunday to Monday and drew executives from top American companies. Apple CEO Tim Cook was there. Tesla CEO Elon Musk skipped it. Neither showed up for Friday’s meeting with Xi.
While Xi pitched China as safe and ready for more foreign investment, Trump continued to hammer it with new trade actions. Since January, the White House has slapped a 20% tariff on goods from China, blaming the country for its alleged role in the U.S. fentanyl crisis. Trump also warned he would drop more tariffs on trading partners starting in April if he didn’t see progress.
He’s also tied TikTok to the trade talks. The President said this week he might lower the tariffs if ByteDance, which is based in Beijing, sells TikTok’s U.S. operations as demanded by the administration.
That demand comes while the U.S. Commerce Department added dozens of Chinese tech companies to its export blacklist, the first use of this tool since Trump returned to the White House in January.
China expands trade elsewhere but holds firm with the US
Even as the pressure mounts from Washington, China is ramping up trade elsewhere. It’s pushing exports and imports with Southeast Asia and the European Union, but the U.S. still ranks as its biggest trading partner by country.
Xi said on Friday that the trade fight should be handled through talks, not escalation. “We need to work for the stability of global supply chains,” he told the room, adding that decoupling won’t work.
The Beijing meeting was part of a broader attempt by Xi’s government to calm nerves in global markets. Instead of slapping back with more tariffs, China is talking directly to executives. It wants to show stability. But the background noise keeps growing louder.
On Sunday, just before the CEO meeting, U.S. Republican Senator Steve Daines traveled to Beijing and met with Premier Li Qiang. That marked the first time an American politician had visited China since Trump began his second term in January.
Daines, speaking to FT, said, “This was the first step to an important next step, which will be a meeting between President Xi and President Trump. When that occurs and where it occurs is to be determined.”
At that meeting, Li pushed for dialogue and said no one wins in a trade war, state media reported. Alongside Daines, several corporate leaders sat in, including reps from FedEx, Pfizer, Cargill, Qualcomm, and Boeing. Sean Stein, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, also attended. A foreign media pool report confirmed all their names.
Later that week, while visiting the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington on March 17, Trump said Xi would “be coming in the not too distant future,” hinting at a summit. It was the clearest signal yet that a top-level face-to-face might happen soon. But not everyone bought it.
Someone familiar with the planning told Financial Times that there hadn’t been any discussion of a trip. Another person based in Beijing said that even basic-level trade talks hadn’t started. That makes a summit unlikely in the short term, unless Trump offers up some deal points in advance. Analysts told FT Xi won’t meet Trump without locking some of that in first.
During Trump’s first term, the two leaders met a few times. Their first encounter was at Mar-a-Lago in 2017, just a few months into Trump’s presidency. He later visited Beijing, but this time around, Xi didn’t show up for the second inauguration in January. Instead, China sent Vice President Han Zheng.
Xi weighs summit options as Trump orders new trade review
Former CIA analyst Christopher Johnson, now heading China Strategies Group, told FT that an early visit by Xi would be a major win for Trump, but said the odds are low. “Xi’s every instinct is militating against a visit too soon,” Johnson said. “He concluded his early visit to Mar-a-Lago in Trump’s first term was a mistake.”
There’s another wrinkle: Trump has ordered a full trade study on China that’s due by April 1. Johnson said Xi won’t move until he sees the outcome. “He seems content for now to let Trump run up the tariffs with no clear off-ramp to teach him that China is not Canada, Mexico or Panama.”
Xi is not done talking to businesses either. He’s scheduled to meet again with dozens of American and international CEOs next week after the China Development Forum, a high-level event in Beijing where top execs sit down with senior Chinese officials.
That forum gives foreign firms a chance to raise issues directly. Senator Daines will attend the forum again. He tried to position himself as a link between Trump and Xi, and although his office denied he was officially serving as an envoy, he had reportedly asked for that designation.
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