China asks US business leaders to use their influence to stop economic ‘repression’

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday received a delegation of American businessmen from the US-China Business Council, calling on them to use their influence to curb the “repression“on the Asian country’s economy, trade and technology.

Wang is confident that businessmen from the North American country will continue to “working hand in hand with China not only to achieve greater development for themselves, but to make new contributions to the development of relations between the two countries and the friendship between the two peoples.“, the state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday.

Furthermore, the head of Chinese diplomacy urged the Business Council and the companies that comprise it to use their contacts and influence to “to show an accurate and multidimensional image of China and to bring together more objective, positive and rational voices to promote a correct understanding of China in the United States and to stop the repression of the Chinese economy, trade and technology (…)”.

“You are the first delegation from the American business community to visit China since the plenum (of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party). You can sense the new atmosphere of deepening (economic) reform, which for the first time covers all aspects.“, said the diplomat.

The delegation, headed by the Chairman of the Business Council, Raj Subramaniam, said that its members are committed to building a bilateral relationship “strong and balanced“and willing to use their influence”actively“to serve as a stabilizing force for the development of ties between the two powers.

Trade, investment, green development, health and education are some of the areas in which American businessmen want to deepen cooperation with China.

Visitors also highlighted forecasts that the meeting will stimulate a new round of economic reforms that will lead to a greater opening of the world’s second-largest economy and the attraction of sustainable foreign investment.

Last week’s highly anticipated CCP plenary session attracted a number of top executives from American companies seeking first-hand information on the political and economic decisions to be made by the ruling party elite at the conclave.

The delegation from the US-China Business Council, which represents more than 270 US companies operating in the Asian country, included representatives from companies such as Goldman Sachs, Starbucks, Nike, Qualcomm, Honeywell and UnitedHealth, according to the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post.