A Chinese Communist Party spokesperson said that the Chinese economy, combined with the country’s anti-COVID measures, makes the nation an attractive place to do business, though a U.S.-China Business Council report found otherwise.
“We believe that with measures being put in place to ensure safety against COVID and promote socio-economic development, the Chinese economy’s great potential, strong resilience, robust vitality and enormous space will be further amplified,” Wang Wenbin, Foreign Ministry spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said during the ministry press conference.
The U.S.-China Business Council Membership Survey conducted in June found that China's COVID-zero strategy is the top concern for American companies that do business in China. Most of the 117 member companies that participated in the survey are large, multinational companies headquartered in the U.S. that have had operations in China for at least 20 years.
The “top challenge” they cited was China's COVID-19 mitigation strategies, the report said. The companies worried that they will be forced to again temporarily halt business operations because of ongoing lockdowns in China. Deteriorating U.S.-China relations and the impact that has on consumers also was cited as a concern, especially as Chinese customers question whether they will have access to U.S. technology in the future.
The report described an overall feeling of pessimism among member companies regarding supply chains and future investments, but the companies acknowledged that China remains a profitable place to do business.
Wenbin said that China's COVID-19 mitigation strategy is beneficial to business sentiment and cited a survey that reportedly found that “more than 60% of American-invested companies and over 70% of German-invested companies plan to increase their investments in China,” according to a press conference transcript. He said foreign companies are optimistic about the strong resilience and development prospects of China’s economy, huge market, industrial and supply chain networks.
China's COVID policies contributed to the worst quarter of growth in the history of some of the country's technology giants, CNBC reported. Beijing responded to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in June with several weeks of strict lockdowns in major cities. Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said the company’s retail sales decreased year-over-year in April and May due to the resurgence of COVID-19 in major cities, and slowly recovered in June.
China stuck to its zero-COVID strategy, with officials reporting on Tuesday that millions of citizens are under new lockdown orders, according to AP News. Around 3 million residents of the port city of Dalian, as well as an unknown number of people in Hebei province, are affected by this new lockdown. In a rare move, a Chinese think tank recently issued a public disagreement with the CCP strategy, calling on Beijing to shift focus to the Chinese economy.
