A China no WEF de Davos: do socialismo de Deng ao capitalismo de Estado (NYT)

The Story of China’s Economic Rise Unfolds in Switzerland

Ever since a politically connected Chinese economist survived prison beatings and went to the 1979 World Economic Forum, the Davos event has had outsize influence in China.

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The 1979 Chinese delegation to the World Economic Forum, including a small team of free-market economists.Credit...World Economic Forum

By Keith Bradsher

• The New York Times, Jan. 20, 2020

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SHANGHAI — Beijing’s alliance with the World Economic Forum started in 1979 with the arrival in Davos, Switzerland, of a small team of free-market economists led by a wizened Chinese intellectual, Qian Junrui, who had barely survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution. He had been imprisoned for eight years, tortured and repeatedly beaten unconscious.

China and Davos have since become one of the oddest power couples in international economics and politics. The relationship traces the story of China’s ascent after Mao. Chinese leaders have repeatedly chosen the forum for important policy speeches.

Nearly three years after overseeing the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, then-Premier Li Peng traveled to Davos and urged global business leaders to resume investing in China. Starting in 2007, the country’s premiers began hosting an annual “summer Davos” sessionin China, with the World Economic Forum, to gather business leaders from across the developing world. And in early 2017, Xi Jinping, China’s current leader, selected Davos for his plea to the world not to embrace trade protectionism and populism.

At this year’s gathering, Chinese officials dealing with a slowing economy and faltering investment are prepared for an energetic promotional message. Their pitch: The signing of an initial trade agreement with the Trump administration last week means China remains a good place for multinationals to keep much of their manufacturing supply chains.

On the face of it, China is an awkward player at a forum that celebrates free trade and markets. China has long maintained some of the highest tariffs on imports of any of the world’s leading trading nations, although it has started to reduce them in the past 18 months. It has won global dominance in a succession of industries through lavish government subsidies and elaborate and often protectionist industrial policies.

Through the years, changes in China’s delegation to Davos have reflected its economy’s evolution. The initial teams were dominated by free-market economists like Mr. Qian.

From the 1990s through the early 2000s, wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs played a leading role. The founders of China’s biggest tech companies, like Jack Ma of Alibaba and Robin Li of Baidu, formed an informal club that meets annually at Davos as they stay at elegantly furnished chalets with magnificent views of the snowy slopes and forests above.

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Participants at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos attend a diner buffet organized by the Chinese city of Dalian.Credit...Thierry Falise/LightRocket, via Getty Images

China’s state-owned enterprises, like State Grid, the main electricity transmission company, have long sent delegates to Davos, but have expanded their phalanxes of top executives in the last few years as Mr. Xi has strengthened their commanding role in the Chinese economy. The Davos forum has become one of the few events for which state-owned enterprise bosses and other senior Communist Party cadres can obtain Beijing’s permission to exit China as domestic surveillance increases.

The executives say practically nothing at the forum itself but hold extensive private meetings at nearby cottages with government and business leaders from around the world. Advisers from global consulting firms help the Chinese leaders organize long schedules of hour-by-hour meetings, followed by stops at cocktail parties and dinners each evening.

As the World Economic Forum prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary this week, the ability of China and the forum to balance the rhetoric of globalization and international openness with China’s increasingly state-led model has seldom been less clear.