March 27, 2024
BEIJING – In an 11-second clip on Weibo on March 24, Apple chief executive Tim Cook declared his love for China – just two days after pledging to increase his company’s investment in the country.
Mr Cook, who was in Beijing for the China Development Forum attended by top business leaders and senior Chinese policymakers, was responding to a question by China Global Television Network at the forum’s opening on whether he had been enjoying his trip to the country.
He said he was enjoying himself very much. “I love China and its people,” Mr Cook said in the short video on the state broadcaster’s Weibo account that has so far garnered 621,000 views.
He was in Shanghai on March 21 for the opening of an Apple Store, the second-largest in the world after an outlet in New York. He told reporters in Shanghai that “there is no supply chain in the world more critical to Apple than that of China”.
Mr Cook’s commitment to the world’s second-largest economy is what the Chinese government hopes to see from other business titans.
During his keynote address at the forum, Chinese Premier Li Qiang promised that policies will be rolled out to allow overseas firms more access to its market.
Beijing also hosted a slew of high-profile events this week aimed at drawing more foreign investment into the country, in a bid to boost confidence in China’s development.
A major investment summit in Beijing on March 26 under the Invest in China 2024 campaign has drawn some success. Top executives at pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca and Pfizer and oil giant Saudi Aramco pledged to support China’s development at the opening of the event.
Business leaders are also slated to meet President Xi Jinping on March 27, according to reports.
Foreign businesses’ direct investment into China in 2023 saw the slowest growth since 1993, given the country’s fragile recovery after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted in late 2022.
Foreign companies and business chambers told The Straits Times that the events over the past few days have helped clarify questions they had about operating in China.
However, the proof will be in the pudding, and the business community is hoping to see more supportive policies rolled out by the state.
Mr Jens Eskelund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, told ST that Premier Li’s 30-minute speech on March 24 was “important for transparency, and for providing business with insight into what China’s economic and policy priorities are for the coming year, given that this year’s Two Sessions did not feature a premier’s press conference”.
He was referring to how China broke a 30-year tradition when it abruptly cancelled the premier’s press conference typically held after the annual Two Sessions parliamentary sessions.
Mr Eskelund noted that Mr Li had acknowledged China’s economic challenges, such as its property market slump and high local government debt.
“While sobering, it is important that these are not overlooked or ignored,” Mr Eskelund said. “It is important that a large part of the speech was dedicated to addressing matters of concern to domestic and foreign enterprises, including the need to support consumption as a driver of the Chinese economy.”
Positive signals from the meetings and speeches aside, “it is only through concrete action that we will begin to see an improvement in business confidence”, he added.
Mr Li also gave assurances on March 24 that foreign companies’ concerns over China’s new regulations on cross-border data flows would be addressed by the government. The worry was that some data transfers may be in breach of anti-espionage laws that came into effect in 2023, leading to a call for more clarity.
Two days later, officials held a session at the summit that provided an official interpretation of the regulations and declaration standards. This would help companies to better understand the exemptions and information the authorities would need to assess potential cross-border data security breaches.
Mr Mats Harborn, executive director of Scania China Group, said the clarifications were helpful to investors’ risk assessment of China.
“China’s investment climate has always been good, but it has been recently full of unclarities.
“By having clarification on many of China’s new laws, the perceived risk of investment goes down for foreign investors, so this is most welcome,” he said, adding that he is looking forward to policies that would help the development of high-tech sectors.
Scania China’s parent company is a major Swedish manufacturer of commercial vehicles such as heavy lorries, trucks and buses. The firm has been stepping up its production of high-tech vehicles.
Mr Tetsuro Homma, Panasonic’s group regional head for China and North-east Asia, told reporters at the summit that he is looking forward to the swift implementation of new policies aimed at attracting overseas investment, which were mentioned during the Two Sessions meetings earlier in March.
Premier Li had said during his delivery of the government report that Beijing will address problems that the business community had raised, including market barriers, policy unpredictability and the uneven playing field between Chinese and overseas companies.
“Hopefully, those policies will be rolled out in the near future, so we can benefit from them and further boost our investment into China,” added Mr Homma, who is also head of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China.
Panasonic plans to invest 25 billion yen (S$222 million) in China in 2024. The Japanese electronics giant had pledged in January 2023 to invest 50 billion yen in China over three years to expand production.
China’s pursuit of foreign investment is expected to continue this week at the Boao Forum for Asia in southern Hainan province, where the keynote address will be delivered by Mr Zhao Leji, the third-highest-ranking member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee, on March 28.
Mr Zhao is expected to highlight China’s role in developing the region and reiterate Beijing’s commitment to developing “new quality productive forces” – a collective term policymakers have been using to describe high-tech sectors such as artificial intelligence, green energy and robotics.