China Market Intelligence

During the final week of November, the US and Chinese governments separately unveiled new iterations of their respective strategies to attract investment and strengthen supply chains. The Biden administration held an inaugural meeting of the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience, and at the same time, senior Chinese policymakers and domestic and foreign companies gathered in Beijing to attend a five-day supply chain expo and policy forum.

In the last year, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) adjusted its rules for cross-border data transfers (CBDT) in what appears to be a slowly loosening government approach to managing data flows. However, given that many fundamental regulations remain in draft form and key terms remain undefined, the change in approach has not yet materialized into lighter compliance burdens for companies.

A four-hour meeting between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of this year’s APEC summit in San Francisco served as a pivotal juncture in thawing relations between the United States and China. The meeting laid the groundwork for expanding communication across multiple levels of government, but it remains to be seen what this will look like in practice and how it will impact US-China commercial relations.

US-China bilateral trade in goods increased 6.8 percent over the previous quarter during Q3 2023, the first quarterly increase since bilateral trade first dived in Q4 2022. Growth in bilateral trade significantly outpaced that of US-worldwide trade, a result of solid consumer spending in the United States and a seasonal increase in US imports of goods ahead of the holiday shopping season that benefits countries that export consumer goods, including China.

In May, USCBC published an article about the troubling number of proposals being discussed in Congress and on the campaign trail calling to revoke China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status. This is a position held by the three frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

After years of conflicting reports on the health of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a recent summit in Beijing indicated that the project is moving in a new direction. On October 17 and 18, China hosted the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation to set the agenda for the next decade.

From October 30 to 31, China convened the twice-a-decade Central Financial Work Conference, an agenda-setting moment for the financial sector. This year’s event took place amid ongoing local government and property sector debt challenges.

On October 23, 2023, the Commerce Department began accepting full applications on a rolling basis for $39 billion in direct investments in US semiconductor firms, along with $75 billion earmarked for loans and loan guarantees allocated in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (CHIPS Act). Commerce previously accepted optional pre-applications.

China’s third quarter economic data exceeded expectations, growing 4.9 percent year-on-year. According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, this growth puts China on track to reach its 5 percent annual economic growth target, provided fourth quarter growth reaches at least 4.4 percent.