Editorial | World gets message that China is back on road to recovery

The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions is sometimes called the summer Davos after the more illustrious original Swiss forum. This year’s gathering of more than 1,500 participants, in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, assumed greater significance as the first since Covid-19 isolation and distancing measures broke the cycle.

What also set it apart, to use the words of keynote speaker Premier Li Qiang, is that it convened as the world stood at a global economic and geopolitical crossroads. Li left his audience in no doubt about how China saw the way ahead, in the face of the Western narrative of “de-risking”, seen as an euphemism for the problematic concept of decoupling.

As Western readings of mainland economic statistics portray a faltering recovery from the pandemic, China’s priority is to win back the confidence of foreign investors and to embolden entrepreneurs to reignite their appetite for risk and animal spirits, both dampened by the zero-Covid policy.

That is the same message Li spread to government officials and businessmen on his recent overseas visit – to key European trade partners Germany and France – since becoming premier.

To that end China, needs to convince the outside world it really is opening up and accepts that improved access to overseas markets is a two-way street. In that regard, policy certainty and predictability are paramount.