By Joe Cash
BEIJING, March 26 (Reuters) – Two high-profile Chinese global forums, including one dubbed Asia’s Davos, have lost their lustre, some international participants said, as Beijing focuses on boosting its domestic economy and confronts various governments on trade issues.
Controversial topics are not being addressed while debate is no longer as robust as it once was, said attendees of the Boao Forum, marking its 25th anniversary on Thursday, and last weekend’s China Development Forum.
Instead of President Xi Jinping or Premier Li Qiang headlining the Boao meeting – sometimes likened to the World Economic Forum’s gatherings in Davos, Switzerland – China’s number three leader, Zhao Leji, gave Thursday’s keynote address.
FORUM ‘HAS LOST ITS SOUL’, ROACH SAYS
And rather than making any bold pronouncements, Zhao, China’s top lawmaker, gave familiar warnings on the danger of regional wars and power politics, urging “peace and tranquillity”, not combat, without mentioning Russia’s war in Ukraine or the Iran conflict.
“The China Development Forum has lost its soul,” American economist Stephen Roach, former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, said of that assembly.
Roach, who has long pushed for China’s policymakers to focus more on spurring consumer demand, posted on Substack on Monday that he had been told his views were too controversial when he was skipped over as an invited speaker in 2024. He was not invited to the gathering in 2025 or this year after attending for 25 years.
China’s foreign ministry directed questions to the organisers of the China Development Forum and the Boao Forum, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the descriptions by some attendees that the meetings had become insular and larded with platitudes.
Xi used his last speech at one of the forums, in 2022, to launch his Global Security Initiative, an effort to reshape global governance and position China as a major geopolitical power. Since then, speakers have focused on Asia and how the region could benefit from China’s vast economy and development.
China was in a different place when it began holding the marquee forums, pushing to become a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001 and looking to build out its supply-chain connectivity. Last year, China posted a $1.2 trillion trade surplus and it now faces accusations from governments worldwide of using unfair subsidies to flood markets with cheap goods.
Even as it pledges to improve market access for foreign firms and rebalance China’s trade ties, presenting the world’s second-largest economy as a predictable anchor in a volatile world, Beijing has imposed curbs on the export of fuel and fertilisers, while neighbouring strategic partners such as Vietnam and Laos struggle with Iran-driven shortages.
Thursday’s Boao meeting included Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, regional business leaders, academics and diplomats, but it did not boast the global leaders, celebrities and CEOs who flocked to Davos in January.
The China head of a foreign consultancy, a longtime attendee at both meetings, lamented the predictability of the speeches and how they invariably focused on China’s economic resilience and promises of win-win cooperation and a “shared future”.
Xi, who met a small group of U.S. executives after the 2024 China Development Forum and a broader group around the same time last year, will not meet company representatives this year, said several sources attending the two forums.
This year, Vice Premier He Lifeng met with U.S. firms on the sidelines of the weekend forum, while Zhao was to meet international business leaders on Thursday in Boao, two invited sources said.
The China heads of several foreign firms said being offered an audience with He, rather than Xi or Li, took some of the shine out of attending the China Development Forum.
The value of attending the leaders’ meeting is that a list of participants will be sent to regulators and provincial governments where the companies are seeking to expand their business, one attendee said.
(Reporting by Joe Cash; Editing by William Mallard)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.