STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
More people are traveling here to China than there were a few years ago. The government has been encouraging visitors in a bid to fire up the economy. Our team saw the difference when we arrived at the Beijing airport.
I'm just remembering that when I've come in recent years, I've come on half-full planes. This is just a lot busier than we've seen.
REENA ADVANI, BYLINE: Absolutely. The plane was packed. We're here waiting on the platform for the train to take us to the main terminal. It's a sea of people.
INSKEEP: That's our editor Reena Advani.
OK, here we go.
We didn't make it onto the first train that arrived and tried for the second.
People with one foot on and one foot off.
We eventually made the third.
ADVANI: This is really wild.
INSKEEP: China is trying to rebalance its economy by boosting consumer spending. It may be getting tourists to pay but not so much its own people. Many avoid optional purchases like going out to eat. And when I met some friends for dinner here over the weekend, we were the only customers in that restaurant. Low demand has led to low prices, as we saw when riding a car using China's rough equivalent of Uber.
ADVANI: The ride today is apparently 80 yuan. I'm just looking at how much that is in dollars. And it is approximately $11.
INSKEEP: It seemed on the low side for a ride all across the city - good for us, but not so good for the driver.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Through interpreter) It's just pocket money, so...
INSKEEP: Our producer Aowen Cao interpreted as the driver said this is his second job. He works for an import export business, which made money shipping medical supplies to the U.S. during the pandemic but has struggled to keep up with the changing economy.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Through interpreter) Before every month, I might have 300 orders from the United States entering China. And now, if I have 30 orders, I would be happy.
INSKEEP: Wow, that's a big change.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
INSKEEP: "Today is Monday," he says, "I don't have much work, and I'd just be sitting at the office, so I'm driving." He asked us not to use his name because his colleagues and family don't know. China remains the world's biggest manufacturer and exporter, a great industrial power, as we could see from the skyscrapers and stadiums we were passing in the car. The government is working to boost consumer spending, too, but the U.S. trade war adds to the pressure which we sensed when we attended an annual conference that China holds here for global business leaders. It's called the China Development Forum.
The entry hall for this forum is filling up with people mostly in dark suits.
One wall of this room is decorated with a traditional Chinese painting of birds in nature and the other three walls are decorated with placards showing major brands that do business in China, including American brands like Otis, Pfizer and American Express. American CEOs attended, among them the heads of Apple and Federal Express.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: China's premier, Li Qiang, the No. 2 official in the government, delivered a speech in front of giant screens that were lit up red, and he portrayed China - not the United States - as the stable nation that is following the world's rules.
PREMIER LI QIANG: (Non-English language spoken).
INSKEEP: He spoke of rising instability and called for open markets. China's been saying that a lot. While the premier never said the words United States, tariffs or Trump, the references were hard to miss.
QIANG: (Through interpreter) Falling back to the law of the jungle will be a regression in history and a tragedy for humanity.
INSKEEP: The people listening included Jens Eskelund. He's based here in Beijing for the European Union Chamber of Commerce, representing many European companies.
JENS ESKELUND: There were comments, also, about the global situation and how China is sort of a source of global stability, committed to the rules-based global order, a proponent of free and fair trade.
INSKEEP: Five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it would have been the United States talking about the rules-based international order and saying that China wasn't really practicing free trade.
ESKELUND: Yes, and I think you're right in that observation.
INSKEEP: Some people at this forum say China still doesn't practice free trade. Michael Hart represents U.S. businesses for the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
MICHAEL HART: China does say that it is open for business in other places or not, but we know that there continue to be both opportunities here but also restrictions on foreign companies doing certain kinds of business. So you could say, for example, technology. There's certainly areas where U.S. can't participate. Telecommunications, finance, agriculture - there continue to be restrictions.
INSKEEP: Businesspeople here face parallel problems. They want to do business in a country that is increasingly focused on its national security. And the United States also is increasingly focused on its national security. This forum, we met one of the businesspeople who say they are caught in the middle.
DUANE KUANG: I'm Duane Kuang. I'm the founding managing partner for a venture capital firm called Qiming. We primarily invest here in China in healthcare and technology.
INSKEEP: He grew up in China, was educated in the United States and worked in Silicon Valley. In 2006, he started raising money - often in America - to invest in Chinese firms. He had plenty of takers at first.
KUANG: Our international investors were completely convinced, sold, committed.
INSKEEP: You didn't even have to sell it for a while.
KUANG: You don't even have to sell it.
INSKEEP: More recent years were different.
KUANG: One is, you know, the Chinese economy has hit a very significant headwind and growth stalled. And obviously, the other aspect of it is geopolitics. It starts creating a lot of uncertainties and start questioning the viability of continued invest in China, whether it is still politically correct.
INSKEEP: There are some American investments, specifically in technology, that the U.S. government has explicitly banned or discouraged.
KUANG: Correct.
INSKEEP: Is it hard to get investments even for areas that are not banned or openly discouraged?
KUANG: That that's a great question. For the longest time. As long as it is strictly and truly and confidently within the law, it is OK. Investors will feel comfortable that you would not get me in trouble.
INSKEEP: Now he goes to a U.S. pension fund or university endowment and finds fund managers who don't want to risk criticism.
KUANG: They may choose not to have the hassle of answering to these very difficult or impossible-to-answer questions.
INSKEEP: When you talk about American investors worried about political correctness, what about investors from other countries who are thinking about China?
KUANG: Less so, but on the other hand, America has huge influence to its neighbors.
INSKEEP: Do you feel personally torn at all, having so many connections to the United States, having done so much business there, to see the two countries in competition or conflict in this way?
KUANG: I am totally torn. It's not just somewhat torn because I love both countries. I was born and raised here, I spent many years in the U.S., and have extended business networks and roots in both societies. But it is the political correctness of, you know, whether or not - even though the law allows it, whether or not a U.S. company should be welcomed or U.S. investors should be welcomed into a Chinese company, a Chinese deal, that type of political correctness bothered me for a long time on the China side. I never thought that would also be coming from the U.S. side, as well. The law is a law. If the law allows it and you're not doing anything, you know, terrible, then it ought to be able to happen. But right now, you know, both sides are tit for tat, that's certainly not something I like to see happen.
INSKEEP: Now, Michel, the annual forum where we met Duane Kuang is, itself, a subtle example of rising tensions. It's an event to encourage global dialogue. Traditionally, it's been a place where Americans might stand up and tell Chinese communist officials what they think. But longtime participants say that in recent years, the discussion has become more managed and a little less open than it used to be.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Steve, I have so many questions, but I'm going to keep it to two. Your last...
INSKEEP: OK
MARTIN: ...Guest there was talking about a climate of fear. Is he saying there's a climate of fear in both the U.S. and China?
INSKEEP: Yeah. He's making that comparison. He's suggesting the two places in that way are the same. Now, we shouldn't take this too far. It's not like the United States is a closed society - you can't say anything. There's a lot more freedom in the United States. But there do tend to be global trends of different kinds, including global trends of freedom. China was a freer place 10 or 12 or 14 years ago. It felt freer. People felt more open. People felt more able to speak out. There still is some room to speak out in China, but it's become narrower and narrower over time. And basically what Duane Kuang is suggesting that as a frequent visitor to the United States, he senses less freedom in the United States for people to say what they want and also to do what they want, particularly when it comes to investing in China.
MARTIN: And, you know, to that end, how easy or hard is it to tell how the economy is doing when there is not a free press, as we would understand it, even considering all the concerns that we do have here in the United States about how the scope of discussion seems to be sort of under some attack. But how do you know there how the economy is doing?
INSKEEP: Yeah. Yeah. There are some challenges. There's a lot of information. Of course, the economy is so important that people gather enormous amounts of information. The government gathers enormous amounts of information. Sometimes economists that I talk with feel they have to squint at the data a little bit to try to figure out what's really going on. They don't necessarily trust everything, but the information is there. And then what we try to do as journalists is go out and check things. We were in a meat market just earlier today. You go out and you talk to people and you try to compare the stories of ordinary people like that driver that we spoke with with the statistics that you get and with the economic analysis of the statistics and you do the best that you can over time. It's an imperfect situation, but you do what you can.
MARTIN: So really interesting. We are going to hear more from Steve and our NPR team in China in the days to come. Steve, thank you.
INSKEEP: Glad to do it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SERILDA BELL'S "UNTIL ETERNITY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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