At a high-level closed meeting between foreign business leaders and top Chinese officials, the business leaders were unusually blunt in their message: applying the zero-COVID policies and other restrictions may lead to China’s economy becoming isolated from the rest of the world.
According to the media, the CEOs of some of the leading multinationals said China stands at a critical point and needs to open up or be overtaken and decline, implying that the country would only fundamentally continue its development if it embraced more changes. They stressed that particularly the effect of the prolonged lockdowns and a lack of global partnership models the world as we know it.
The honesty of these executives, who rarely question Xi Jinping and Chinese policies, partly shows the unsettled opinion of the world about tighter domestic policies of the President within the international arena. Some were also casting all kinds of doubts about whether the shifts of production to other countries would be needed at all.
The high officials listened, but the idea of facilitation or acknowledgement of the West was absent from their remarks. Per China’s stance, the lives of the Chinese people come before concerns of instability and irrational hysteria.
Nevertheless, some analysts also view this encounter as an inflexion point in history that marks the beginning of the end of China’s ‘Perilous Dependence‘ on foreign capital and expertise. Confirming whether policy adjustments result in demand fulfilment will now become the focus of all observers.
Without a plan for transition and enforceability, the move to no longer produce some of the world’s most essential manufactured goods in China will doubtfully lead to a stable and sustainable model and a decrease in global interconnectedness, which counts against not only China’s core economic calendar but the world’s interdependence.
