CHINA TOUTS FREE TRADE
Xi in spotlight in Davos
With the U.S. increasingly looking inward and China eager to take a lead on the global stage, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday cast his country as a champion of free trade and stability, a rebuke to the isolationist urges that helped carry Donald Trump to power.
Some of the elites listening in Davos, Switzerland, hailed a statesmanlike, even Barack Obama-like speech from Xi as the first Chinese head of state to attend the World Economic Forum — even if it depicted a Chinese commitment to open markets that falls short of reality.
The speech, rife with metaphor and allusions to Ali Baba, Chinese proverbs and even Abraham Lincoln, highlighted a highbrow effort to make a contrast with an incoming U.S. leader whose own words regularly stirred controversy at home and abroad and created new doubts about U.S. leadership in the world.
“We must remain committed to promoting free trade and investment through opening up and say no to protectionism,” Xi told an opening meeting of the WEF. “Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room. While wind and rain may be kept outside, so are light and air.”
“No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war,” he said.
During his campaign, Trump promised to raise tariffs on Chinese goods and declare Beijing guilty of keeping its currency artificially low. That would be a first step toward imposing sanctions. But in fact, for the past couple of years China has been intervening in markets to prop up its currency, not push it lower.
“China has no intention to boost its trade competitiveness by devaluing the renminbi, still less will it launch a currency war,” Xi said Tuesday.
Xi made no direct reference to Trump, but his vocal support for free trade could appear rich to other Western countries who have grumbled about commercial restrictions in China. Foreign companies complain Beijing is reducing access to its markets for electric cars, computer security technology and other promising fields or pressing them to give know-how to potential Chinese competitors. Some say they are blocked from acquiring assets in China, just as Chinese companies have been on a foreign buying spree.
Beijing also faces U.S. and European complaints it is exporting steel, aluminum, solar panels and other goods at improperly low prices, threatening thousands of jobs abroad.
“What specific things is China going to do in terms of opening up, becoming a true engine of globalization?” said Nariman Behravesh, IHS chief economist, of the Xi speech. Xi also stepped into other areas of international consensus, calling the Paris accord to fight climate change a “hard-won achievement,” and urging signatories to “stick to it.”
We must remain committed to promoting free trade and investment through opening up.
Trump, who has called climate change a Chinese hoax, has raised speculation that he might pull the U.S. out.
The visit by Xi caps the largestever Chinese delegation to Davos, including over 100 officials and scores of business executives. Xi cast the world economy as adrift, saying it lacked a “driving force” and that inadequate global governance and unequal benefits have widened the gulf between rich and poor.
“This is the biggest challenge in the world today,” he said.