Upon arrival in the U.S. yesterday, Xi Jinping met with tech giants and business leaders in Seattle. Xi Jinping will continue to meet with the CEOs of America’s biggest tech firms before any meetings with political leaders as part of his U.S. visit.
Even before his meeting with President Obama on Thursday, China’s president Xi Jinping will seek to build relationships with America’s top companies. Xi is eating dinner with Bill Gates, then meeting with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s top man, Tim Cook, among many others.
But China has been caught in numerous hacking attacks against some of the companies that Xi is seeking to build relationships with. He is expected to address those attacks by furthering relations with U.S. businesses. It’s in no way a direct response by Xi to the allegations. In fact, Xi may further push the new, highly controversial requirements for doing business in China, first revealed this summer.
Xi Jinping expects companies to allow the Chinese government unprecedented access to internal information. Despite the massive criticism and potential sanctions Obama advocated against Chinese cybertheft, Xi has taken an angular approach to getting access to American intellectual property.
Xi Jinping knows that Facebook and Google are still blocked in China. Google mostly pulled out of China after getting fed up with hacking and censorship. But as the New York Times reports, new documents take those kinds of policies to a new level by officially requiring businesses to hand over data and intellectual property .
Xi Jinping’s two days of meetings specifically with business and tech firms will no doubt seek ways to push these new requirements, as well as to affirm to companies that the Chinese economy is still ripe for investment, despite the massive slowdown.
The problem with the approach is that tightening restrictions on foreign investment in the midst of an economic crisis, instead of easing them, could persuade companies away from further investment. Obama has also urged business leaders to express caution during the meetings. Xi Jinping will likely face more questions about cybertheft during the rest of his visit.
Under Xi’s leadership, China has seen unprecedented crackdowns on corrupt politicians, including jailing top leaders, and even going after escaped corrupt Chinese politicians on U.S. soil. CNN reported how Xi Jinping met laughter after saying his efforts to curb corruption were not unlike House of Cards . Netflix’s House of Cards is one of the most popular illegally downloaded shows in China.
[Photo by Ramil Sitdikov / Host Photo Agency / Ria Novosti via Getty Images]
