Xi’s entourage shows upgrade in commerce, industry sectors capacities

Experts said the business delegation accompanying Chinese President Xi Jinping on his upcoming US state visit highlights China's upgraded commercial and industrial capacities. The CEOs of 15 top Chinese companies are traveling with Xi to the US. They will meet with 15 executives of top US companies in Seattle on Wednesday, according to the Chicago-based Paulson Institute. The delegation includes well-known business leaders Ma Yun of the Alibaba Group, Ma Huateng of Tencent Holdings, Yang Yuanqing of the Lenovo Group, and Li Yanhong of Baidu Inc. Most of the 15 companies are private firms. The percentage of private firms accompanying leaders on foreign visits is on the rise and the percentage of IT firms has hit a record high. "The executives in the group were chosen either based on their US links or those whose companies will soon launch new projects with partners in the US," He Weiwen, an executive council member of the China Society for WTO Studies, told the Global Times Monday. He said that many deals will be signed during Xi's visit, including some highly anticipated ones, such as Boeing's plan to set up plants in China and Sino-US cooperation on commercializing the fourth generation of nuclear power plant technology. Some projects were announced before Xi's visit. In August, the Wanxiang Group, one of the 15 firms, agreed to invest $10 million in Shanghai-based InnoSpring, which owns the first US-China incubator technology platform in Silicon Valley. Wanxiang currently invests in over 60 real estate projects in the US. The Chinese president's state visit comes at a time when the Chinese economy is shifting from government spending and manufacturing to consumption. After decades of double-digit expansion, China's economy recorded its slowest growth rate in nearly a quarter of a century, when the country readjusted its 2014 economic growth figure to 7.3 percent in September. "In the past, Chinese companies tried hard to expand in the US market through lower prices, but many emerging domestic companies have an edge on their US counterparts, especially in infrastructure, railways and power grids," Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times Monday. China's Internet companies will meet their US counterparts, as US companies also hope to further expand in the Chinese market, Wang said. China's three major IT companies, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, will be part of the delegation for the first time. "Xi's visit to Seattle brings together the three tech giants. While the US remains a leader in IT, China is a rising star," Xu Hongcai, an expert at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, told the Global Times Monday. With the listing of Chinese tech firms in the US, especially that of Alibaba, the bond between the China and the US markets has grown closer, Xu said. "Although China's technology is not as advanced as that of the US, China is quite good at marketing technologies, which is what US firms need," Wang said.