Chinese → English transcript

Most people have never thought about this: why is it that when a country’s

leader visits another country besides senior officials, they

also make a point of bringing a group of businesspeople from their own country?

What role do these businesspeople

actually play during negotiations between the two heads of state?

To showcase national power? Or just to visit and learn? Before a visit,

how does the president decide who gets to go and who does not?

Just a couple of days ago, the White House released the list of the business

delegation for Trump’s trip to China, what we call the CEO delegation.

But people noticed something unusual,

namely that this list seems to be much smaller than expected.

Hold on, today we are going to use Trump’s China visit as a chance to

really break this down.

When heads of state visit another country,

how exactly do they select which business leaders accompany them?

What exactly is their role?

And what is the real purpose of Trump’s visit to China this time?

Do you still remember Trump’s first visit to China in 2017?

He brought a full 29 business leaders.

It was a spectacular scene, they signed a batch of huge purchase deals,

the news footage was all handshakes and group photos. But this time,

there are only about 12 people.

And in the few months before Trump’s visit,

other national leaders also paid intensive visits to China.

For example, in January this year, British Prime Minister Starmer visited China and

brought representatives from nearly 60 British companies and institutions.

For example, at the end of February,

German Chancellor Merz visited China with a 30- member business delegation,

and even made a special trip to Hangzhou to visit Unitree Robotics.

In this comparison,

do those 12 Americans look even more striking? Many people might think,

the CEO delegation is just there to tag along, to make up the numbers,

create an atmosphere, and sign a few not- so- important purchase agreements.

So what does it matter if there are many people or few? Actually, it does matter.

In diplomacy, a CEO delegation actually has two dimensions of meaning,

and each dimension sends a very important signal.

The first dimension is the headcount,

which actually reflects that country’s level of expectation,

or you could say its“ signal of sincerity” in the negotiations.

It is like two companies negotiating a big merger.

If the other side sends twenty people— lawyers, finance staff, consultants,

industry experts all lined up— it shows they have already made this a top priority

and are throwing all their best resources into it.

But if the other side sends only three people, it shows they are still hesitating,

and have not decided whether to seriously do this deal.

Who they send, how many people they send,

is their way of telling the other side how much this matter is worth to them.

Beyond that, the number of businesspeople

in the delegation also shows how relaxed the United States is about trade controls.

According to reports,

part of the reason the list was cut this time was the insistence of U.S.

Trade Representative Katherine Tai. Why

would a trade representative care about how many people are in the CEO delegation?

Because she is trying to prevent one thing: businesspeople going off the leash.

Think about it, if Apple’s Tim Cook went, what would his first impulse be?

It would be to sell more iPhones in China, to keep the supply chain in China,

and to negotiate more cooperation with China.

All of that is good for Apple, but it might clash with the U.S.

government’s strategic goal of controlling dependence on Chinese technology.

The second dimension is,

whoever is on the list is the one sitting at the negotiating table.

For example, suppose you are a partner at a law firm and you are going to

negotiate a contract dispute with the other side.

You bring an intellectual property lawyer because you care about patents,

you bring a labor lawyer which shows your focus is on employee clauses.

And this time the U.S. list includes Nvidia and Qualcomm,

which shows that chip export controls will definitely be on the agenda.

With Boeing’s CEO and agricultural representatives on it,

that shows soybean and airplane purchases will also be put on the table.

This list is basically America’s“ priority list,”

you can see through it at a glance. So you might be wondering,

what is it that the United States really wants this time?

Actually, once we figure out the signaling mechanism of the CEO group,

we can read America’s four core demands from the list of names.

First, implement“ managed trade.”

The United States no longer believes that“ free trade” will

automatically benefit America.

What the United States wants now is more like a purchase limit in a supermarket.

Each person is limited to two cartons of eggs, it is not that you cannot buy them,

but I am the one who sets the rules. I will set the upper limit.

Second is the economic“ recovery.”

The Boeing CEO came along in person, he is not here for sightseeing.

Boeing used to be the single most important U.S. export product to China.

The price of one 737 MAX is roughly around one hundred million dollars.

After the 2019 737 MAX crash,

Chinese airlines slashed a large number of orders.

If China resumes purchases, the potential scale will exceed forty billion dollars.

This is life- saving money for Boeing,

and it is also a direct support for manufacturing jobs inside the United States.

Support. The logic behind agricultural products is even more political,

American soybean farmers in the Midwest are the Republican Party’s core voters.

Farmers in Iowa and those

states suffered heavy losses back then because of the trade war with China, and the

government handed out tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to make up for it.

If China resumes massive purchases of soybeans and beef, subsidies can be saved,

farmers are happy, and the political gains land directly in the bank.

Third,“ limited coexistence” in tech.

The fact that Nvidia and Qualcomm are on the list shows there is a real internal

contradiction in the U.S. that is tearing it apart.

The government wants to restrict China’s access to advanced chips,

but companies like Nvidia are shouting on Capitol Hill at the top of their lungs

that the bans are too harsh, and that we cannot keep doing business in China,

which in turn is letting Huawei move in and fill our place.

Fourth, strategic buffer.

The U.S. has not yet solved its Middle East problems, its overseas ammunition

depots are being heavily depleted, and its domestic economy is a mess.

At a time like this,

the most rational strategy is not to win a big war on some front,

but to stabilize things first and keep the situation from getting worse.

At this point you might ask,

with so many demands from the U.S., does China have any reason to cooperate?

The answer is that the reasons are very limited. In these years when the U.S.

has tried to blockade China with export controls, China’s AI R& D has not stopped.

Companies like Huawei and Cambricon have kept pushing ahead with self- developed

chips, and the pace of domestic substitution has been much faster than the outside

world expected. And at the application level,

the gap between China’s large models and AI products and the U.S.

cutting- edge level has already been compressed to just a matter of months.

The U.S. is very eager for China to buy Boeing planes and soybeans,

but China can buy Airbus, and it can buy Brazilian soybeans. Yet the U.S.

very much wants China’s rare earths, and it has no good alternatives.

So this situation can be summed up in one sentence: the U.S.

is holding a trump card that is depreciating,

and wants to trade it for things in China’s hands that have not yet depreciated.

This kind of deal is logically very hard to strike.

Overall, a scaled- down CEO delegation and a summit with expectations

carefully managed sent more signals than you might think. Guyu Wealth Management,

the private wealth manager everyone needs.