Chinese President Xi Jinping said that he will do what it takes to strengthen the business relations between China and the US.
Xi told 30 corporate leaders in a speech that at the end of August a total of $76 billion had been invested in China by 65,000 U.S. enterprises.
He went on to talk about the number of Chinese companies that operate in the US and the 80,000 full-time jobs that they have created.
“China-U.S. business cooperation has enormous potential,” Xi said.
“The long-term positive trend of the Chinese economy will not change. We are clearly aware of the risks and challenges in the Chinese economy… In the long run, the fundamentals of the Chinese economy are good and sound.”
China-US relations have been rocky over the past year because of cyber-espionage, human rights, and climate change.
But Xi said in his speech that China was “a strong defender of cyber security” as well as a “victim of hacking”. “The Chinese government will not, in whatever form, engage in commercial thefts or encourage or support such attempts by anyone,” he said.
“Both commercial cyber theft and hacking against a government’s networks are crimes that must be punished in accordance with law and relevant international treaties.”
While the two governments have had disagreements on a range of issues it is evident that the US and China are becoming increasingly intertwined economically.
“U.S. and China is the most important bilateral relationship we have in the world today,” said Henry M. Paulson, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary who’s now chairman of the Paulson Institute. “Business is the cornerstone of that relationship.”
