China’s premier, trying to boost economy, says west is sowing division

TIANJIN, China — Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday accused Western nations of “sowing division and confrontation,” in thinly veiled criticisms of Washington, as he sought to cast his country as a responsible world power and champion for globalization.
Speaking at the opening of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin — sometimes called the “Summer Davos” — Li worked to draw a contrast between his country and “some people in the West” who, he claimed, have politicized economic issues at a time when the global economy most needs exchange and cooperation. “The invisible barriers put up by some people in recent years are becoming widespread and pushing the world into division and even confrontation,” Li said.
This is the first time since before the pandemic that the event has taken place in person, and Li’s first time on center stage. A former Chinese Communist Party boss in Shanghai who became premier in March, Li is close to Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader in decades.
Attendees include the prime ministers of New Zealand, Vietnam and Barbados, as well as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization.
“Recent years of rhetoric by some people have stoked ideological prejudice and hatred and, as a result, we are seeing acts of encirclement and oppression,” Li told the forum, which continues through Thursday. His remarks come after the United States and other Group of Seven countries pledged to reduce their exposure to China, the world’s second-largest economy, saying they needed to “de-risk” and diversify away from China as its business practices “distort the global economy.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was the first to use the language “de-risk, not decouple,” in January this year.
Li took direct aim at the strategy of de-risking — a term U.S. officials say is meant to show a desire to reduce potentially dangerous dependencies.
“If there is risk in a certain industry, it is businesses that are in the best position to assess such risk. Governments … should not overreach and they should not stretch the concept of risk to turn it into an ideological tool,” the premier said.
On a visit to Beijing last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was not trying to “economically contain” China, but was trying to ensure it did not sell China specific technologies that could be used against American interests, such as in 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 decoupling would be “disastrous” and that the U.S. only wanted to “de-risk” the relationship.
But China sees such efforts as part of an American plan to thwart its rise, and efforts to exert pressure from the outside are particularly concerning for Beijing as it struggles to restart the consumer-led economy after three years of paralyzing “zero covid” policies.
Estimates for China’s growth this year range from 4.4 percent to more than 6 percent. S&P Global on Tuesday cut its forecast for China’s growth for the year to 5.2 percent from its previous estimate of 5.5 percent.
Weak consumer spending — on everything from gadgets to cars — and slow property sales are adding to concern that growth, which picked up immediately after the end of zero-covid restrictions in December, is now losing its momentum.
During the three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday at the end of last week, the number of trips taken and the amount spent during them was lower than in 2019, before the pandemic, according to official statistics.
Some experts at Chinese state think tanks have called on the government to issue special treasury bonds to all 1.4 billion people in China to subsidize cash-strapped households.
The risk of a serious property market downturn, unsustainable levels of government debt and rising unemployment are also adding to concerns about the Chinese economy.
Youth unemployment is particularly bad, with the rate for people aged between 16 and 24 hitting a record high of 20 percent last month, a figure that analysts say most likely does not capture the full picture of joblessness. But Li, who is in charge of China’s economic policies, sought to restore confidence in the Chinese economy as it struggles to recover. He said he was “fully confident” in his country’s economic prospects and that China was on track of meeting its economic goal of “around 5 percent.”
“China, as a responsible major country, has stood on the right side of history and the right side of progress,” he said.
While officials such as Li try to emphasize that China is again open for business, at home authorities have raided foreign consulting firms, cracked down on Chinese entrepreneurs gaming and updated a foreign espionage law that left overseas firms wary of doing business here.
Authorities continue to keep a tight rein on information. On Monday, Wu Xiaobo, a popular blogger who writes about finance, was blocked from the platform Sina Weibo for posting “negative and harmful information” about Chinese economic policies.