Is doing business in China becoming impossible for foreigners?
JUDGING PURELY by the steady stream of Western executives crossing the Pacific, China is picking up where it left off before the onset of covid-19. In the past couple of weeks Elon Musk of Tesla, an electric-car maker, met with officials in Beijing on his first trip to the country in more than three years. At the same time Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, America’s biggest bank, was hosting a conference in Shanghai that brought together more than 2,500 clients from around the world. Hundreds of business bigwigs have made similar trips in the past three months. President Xi Jinping’s top officials have been greeting them with a mantra that, after a pandemic hiatus, “China is back in business.”
Once the executives settle in, though, many are finding the place a lot less welcoming. In April the government strengthened an already strict anti-espionage law and, according to the Wall Street Journal, put China’s spymaster in charge of cracking down on security threats posed by American firms. Officials invoke hazily worded data-related laws introduced during the pandemic, which perplex many foreign businesses, American or otherwise. Something as innocent as sharing an email signature, considered under some interpretations of Chinese data laws as personal information, with a recipient abroad can get you into hot water.
The space for foreigners doing business in China was already being constrained by restrictions that their own governments, led by America’s, have placed on Chinese companies amid rising geopolitical tensions; more than 9,000 Chinese firms have been hit by Western sanctions, according to Wirescreen, a data provider. Now Mr Xi is shrinking businesses’ room for manoeuvre further. Worse, even cautious movements within the room that remains can invite disaster.
2023-06-11 13:06:36
Post from www.economist.com
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