At the American Chamber of Commerce’s 110th anniversary ball in Shanghai this month, there were few initial signs that the US-China trade war was weighing on proceedings. But that abruptly changed when US consul general Scott Walker took to the stage.
Following a speech from retired NBA star Yao Ming, Walker reeled off a litany of complaints over China’s business environment. These included intellectual property theft, subsidies, China’s nearly $1tn trade surplus with the rest of the world, “arbitrary legal enforcement” and blocked or limited foreign investment. China “remains one of the most closed major economies in the world for both trade and investment”, he said, and America wanted it to open “in a fair way”.
The next speaker, Chen Jing, president of the government-affiliated Shanghai People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, could not resist going off script. “To counter the wrongful remarks on China-US trade just made by the consul-general,” he began in Mandarin.