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At the American Chamber of Commerce’s 110th anniversary ball in Shanghai this month, there were few initial signs that the US-China trade war was weighing on proceedings. But that abruptly changed when US consul general Scott Walker took to the stage.
Following a speech from retired NBA star Yao Ming, Walker reeled off a litany of complaints over China’s business environment. These included intellectual property theft, subsidies, China’s nearly $1tn trade surplus with the rest of the world, “arbitrary legal enforcement” and blocked or limited foreign investment. China “remains one of the most closed major economies in the world for both trade and investment”, he said, and America wanted it to open “in a fair way”.
The next speaker, Chen Jing, president of the government-affiliated Shanghai People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, could not resist going off script. “To counter the wrongful remarks on China-US trade just made by the consul-general,” he began in Mandarin.
Before the interpreter had time to translate, a wave of applause had already broken across the audience, which included many native speakers employed by American companies. Chen recounted praise for Shanghai’s Disneyland on a visit to Disney’s headquarters in Los Angeles two years ago.
“Then I went to San Francisco, to Tesla’s gigafactory, and they told me the best Tesla gigafactory in the world is in Shanghai,” he said. “So I want to ask the consul general . . . does this mean that trade is unequal, the business environment in China is not good, and Shanghai does not have equal conditions for the development of US-funded companies?”
Compared with the rhetorical clashes of America 2025, such a debate might seem unremarkable in tone, even restrained. But in China, where public discourse is carefully rehearsed, it amounted to an extraordinarily open exchange.
It points to the challenges facing the groups that represent international businesses in China. For decades, the foreign chambers have been at the vanguard of globalisation as the country reopened, advocating reform and lobbying for more trade through dialogue and consultation. Each year, they produced in-depth reports on behalf of their members that laid out requests for change, in line with expectations of further internationalisation.
They now face an entirely different environment, marked by a more closed mainland and a trade war that has threatened to strand businesses in no man’s land. Although the requests for change continue, there are few signs of overarching convergence between China and the west.
Engagement, too, has become more challenging. There have always been limits on the impact of this: many of the requested changes would in effect amount to a reworking of the structure of the economy. But the difficulties are clearer.
Carlo D’Andrea, chair of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, says engagement can still work, pointing to the example of “ambiguous” rules on cross-border data transfers that meetings with officials by the European chamber and governments helped to address.
His chamber has met with the mayor of Shanghai and leaders of three of its most important districts. But neither the European nor the American chamber have had a direct meeting with Chen Jining, the powerful party secretary of Shanghai and a member of China’s 24-person Politburo in Beijing. In a statement, the American Chamber said this was not indicative of a lack of engagement, given it typically meets with other government officials.
The Danish chamber met Chen last August. Simon Lichtenberg, chair, says his organisation does not “publicise” their requirements and seeks meetings with officials which have specific responsibilities for the issues it wants to address.
In China’s political system, it is not always straightforward to assess who to lobby, or how changes would be practically implemented. When asked about the effectiveness of the Shanghai American Chamber’s meetings with officials, its chair Jeffrey Lehman, dressed in black tie just ahead of the ball, struck a philosophical tone. “You know Pascal’s wager?’ he replied, in reference to the maxim that it is best to believe in God whether he exists or not.
“We can’t know for sure whether the people we’re speaking to have power and influence, but they might, and that possibility is a reason for us to keep doing what we’re doing.”
thomas.hale@ft.com
