Chinese leaders target two Washingtons

US media are reporting he will meet Microsoft founder Bill Gates and chieftains of other IT firms, and visit Boeing’s  and factory, where a new deal for Boeing to open a 737 delivery and completion centre in China is expected to be announced soon. 

He will also attend an American/Chinese session hosted by the Paulson Institute, a think tank founded by former Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, and may also join the US-China Internet Industry Forum, hosted by Microsoft and the Internet Society of China.

Even without Xi, the forum will feature one of China’s leadership luminaries in Internet czar Lu Wei, who oversees his country’s restrictions on foreign technology companies. This is part of China’s outreach to the world’s leading tech companies, maintaining dialogue with the likes of Google and Facebook despite them being among the companies blocked by China’s web filters from doing business in the country.

While the US wants an Internet where companies can operate worldwide and users can express themselves freely, China believes countries should be able to force Web companies to follow local laws, including censoring content and monitoring users.

Since China is the world’s biggest Internet market with more than 600 million estimated users, US companies can’t afford not to engage in this 

discussion. 

Some will be pushing their government to engage more forcefully with Beijing on the issue, and no doubt hoping for some stern talking at the White House later this week. Others will be wary of their government pushing too hard and China reacting by further restricting market access.

Raising the stakes even further, while Beijing has been conducting the kind of “charm offensive” this week, it has been steadily introducing policies trying to lessen China’s use of foreign technology, citing cybersecurity concerns. 

While China develops its own operating system, Microsoft’s Windows 8 software is subject to a Chinese government procurement ban, Qualcomm is one of several US companies that have been subject to antitrust investigations in China and Beijing has passed laws making it much harder for foreign companies to sell computer equipment to Chinese banks.

Clearly, such delicate issues will not be resolved this week on either coast of the US. But at least with both parties prepared to engage with each other, there is hope that the two tech heavyweights will eventually reach a mutually beneficial agreement.