China has recently gone to great lengths to ensure the world knows it is open for business. President and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, has repeatedly taken it upon himself this year to deliver that message to key world leaders and corporate heads.
“Over the next five years, China will continue to promote high-quality development and expand high-standard opening-up,” Xi told Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin in January. Xi also expressed a willingness “to step up economic and trade cooperation, seek synergy of development strategies in such areas as artificial intelligence, the digital economy, and pharmaceuticals and health, and encourage two-way investment,” according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry readout.
Then, later that month, Xi made his pitch to the now-outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “As China kicks off its 15th Five-Year Plan, the two sides may expand win-win cooperation in the services sector,” Xi proposed, specifically mentioning cooperation in “education, health, and finance, and… joint research and commercial application in artificial intelligence, life sciences, new energy, and low-carbon technologies for shared development and prosperity.”
