Why China waited for Donald Trump to leave to open the door to its financial sector
US business has long lobbied for Beijing to raise caps on foreign stakes in financial firms but Washington didn’t know the change was coming
There was one reason why China waited until the US president had left town to drop its bombshell about the financial sector – to send a message.
Beijing wanted to stress that it was opening the market wider on its own terms and not bowing to US or European pressure, analysts said.
Just hours after US President Donald Trump left the Chinese capital for Vietnam on Friday, vice finance minister Zhu Guangyao announced that China would remove the cap on foreign ownership in Chinese banks and asset management companies (AMC), raise the lid on investment in securities houses and further open up the financial sector in the next three to five years.
A US business representative in Trump’s trade delegation said the announcement came at a “surprising” time, given that it was not included in the unveiling of a record US$253 billion in deals signed by companies from the two countries on Thursday to underscore Beijing’s efforts to appease Washington.
Despite Wall Street lobbying for at least a decade for offshore institutions to have greater access to China’s financial market, Trump and the US State Department did not even know the announcement was coming, Bloomberg quoted sources as saying.