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TIANJIN, China — Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday accused Western nations of “sowing division and confrontation,” offering thinly veiled criticism of Washington for attempting to portray his country as a responsible global power and champion of globalization.
Opening the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum’s new champions in Tianjin — sometimes dubbed “Summer Davos” — Li tried to draw a contrast between his country and “some people in the West,” who he says have politicized economic issues at a time , where the world economy needs exchange and cooperation most.
“The invisible barriers that some people have erected in recent years continue to spread, pushing the world into division and even confrontation,” Li said.
This is the first time since before the pandemic that the event has been held in person, and Li is taking center stage for the first time. Li, a former chief of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai who became prime minister in March, is close to Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader in decades.
Attendees include the Prime Ministers of New Zealand, Vietnam and Barbados, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization.
“The rhetoric of some people in recent years has fueled ideological prejudice and hatred, and as a result we are witnessing acts of encirclement and repression,” Li said at the forum, which lasts through Thursday.
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His comments came after the United States and other Group of Seven countries pledged to reduce their exposure to China, the world’s second-biggest economy, and said they needed to “de-risk” and diversify away from China because of its Business practices “distorting the global world”. Business.”
In January this year, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was the first to use the phrase “reduce risk, not decouple”.
Li aimed squarely at the strategy of de-risking – a term US officials say is meant to reflect a desire to reduce potentially dangerous dependencies.
“If there is a risk in a particular industry, it is the companies that are best placed to assess that risk. “Governments … should not go too far and make the concept of risk an ideological tool,” the Prime Minister said.
During a visit to Beijing last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States is not trying to “economically contain” China, but is trying to ensure it doesn’t sell specific technologies to China that could be used against American interests, such as Beijing’s nuclear weapons or hypersonic missile programs.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who is due to visit Beijing next week, has echoed this, saying that a decoupling would be “catastrophic” and that the US only wanted to de-risk the relationship.
But China sees such efforts as part of an American plan to thwart its rise, and attempts to apply outside pressure are particularly concerning for Beijing as it struggles to regain the consumer-centric economy after three years of crippling “zero-Covid” policies to get going.
Estimates for China’s growth this year range from 4.4 percent to over 6 percent. S&P Global on Tuesday lowered its forecast for China’s growth for the year to 5.2 percent from a previous estimate of 5.5 percent.
Weak consumer spending – on everything from gadgets to cars – and slow home sales are adding to concerns that growth, which picked up immediately after zero Covid restrictions ended in December, is now losing momentum.
According to official statistics, during the three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday late last week, the number of trips made and the amounts spent on them were lower than in 2019, i.e. before the pandemic.
Some experts at Chinese state think tanks have urged the government to issue special government bonds to all 1.4 billion people in China to subsidize cash-strapped households.
The risk of a severe real estate downturn, unsustainable levels of government debt and rising unemployment are also adding to concerns about the Chinese economy.
Youth unemployment is particularly bad: The rate for people aged 16 to 24 hit a record high of 20 percent last month, a number that analysts say most likely doesn’t paint the full picture of unemployment.
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But Li, who is in charge of China’s economic policy, has been trying to restore confidence in the Chinese economy as it struggles to recover. He said he was “completely confident” about his country’s economic prospects and that China was on track to meet its economic target of “around 5 percent”.
“China has stood on the right side of history and the right side of progress as a responsible big country,” he said.
While officials like Li are trying to stress that China is open for business again, domestic authorities have raided foreign consulting firms, cracked down on Chinese entrepreneurs and updated a foreign espionage law that discourages foreign firms from doing business here.
The authorities continue to keep the information under strict control. On Monday, Wu Xiaobo, a popular finance blogger, was banned from the Sina Weibo platform for posting “negative and harmful information” about China’s economic policies.