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FINANCIAL TIMES
Wang Qishan, China’s philosopher king The
vice-president seeks advice to defuse trade tension but struggles to
understand Trump Tom Mitchell Wang Qishan is known
for regaling his visitors with erudite references to books such as
Alexis de Tocqueville’s 19th-century treatises on American democracy and
the French Revolution. So this spring foreign dignitaries granted
audiences with China’s vice-president were surprised when he referred to
rather more pedestrian fare. Mr Wang, 70, told
overseas visitors that he understood supporters of US president Donald
Trump in part because he had recently seen Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri, the hit Hollywood movie set in a fictional rural town
which would — if it really existed — have voted for the US president by
a wide margin. This was one of a
number of recent instances when Mr Wang has struck visitors as oddly out
of touch, and occasionally more arrogant than charming. He was also —
after playing an outsized role in Chinese finance and politics for a
quarter of a century — curiously invisible during his first six months
as vice-president. For five years Mr Wang
was the ruthless head of President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption
campaign. The two men are “princeling” members of prominent political
families — Mr Xi by birth and Mr Wang by marriage — and rose in parallel
up the ranks of the Chinese Communist party. Mr Wang served in a series
of financial posts that cemented his reputation as one of the party’s
best crisis managers. He also worked closely with top Wall Street banks
on a number of Chinese financial restructurings and state bank initial
public offerings. Mr Wang’s surprise
appointment to the vice-presidency in March, despite his having passed
the traditional retirement age for top party leaders, was widely
interpreted as a sign that he would play a high-profile role in
international affairs, with a focus on the US. Instead he largely
disappeared. Even as trade tension with the US erupted in April, he only
surfaced for anodyne public appearances. Meanwhile it was vice-premier
Liu He, Mr Xi’s most trusted economic adviser, who ended up doing all
the heavy lifting on US relations this year as China’s lead trade
negotiator. This week, however, Mr
Wang stepped back into the spotlight. On the eve of Mr Trump’s decision
to impose punitive tariffs on more than half of all Chinese imports, the
vice-president met two delegations whose members included former US
cabinet officials such as Robert Rubin and prominent Wall Street
financiers. Both meetings,
according to participants and people briefed on the sessions, were
dominated by one subject — Sino-US relations and possible ways to defuse
the world’s worst trade war since the 1930s. “He is coming out of
the shadows,” says Chris Johnson, an Asian affairs expert at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies and a former CIA China analyst.
“He was supposed to be ‘the guy’ on the Sino-US portfolio but seemed to
be dodging it.” Mr Wang struck a
conciliatory tone at the meetings this week, telling top executives from
Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and other US financial firms on Monday that
neither China nor America “needs to prevail over the other”. The softer messages
contrasted with spring meetings at which Mr Wang often lectured US
business executives and foreign diplomats. “He was in history professor
mode,” says one Asian diplomat who attended a small group meeting with
Mr Wang in April. “His message was that it is important to choose sides
carefully in the ebb and flow of history,” adds the diplomat, whose
colleagues interpreted the comments as a warning not to ally themselves
too closely with the US. At another April
meeting with a delegation led by David Lidington, the UK’s Cabinet
Office minister, Mr Wang’s guests politely expressed support for
economic reforms that had just been announced by Mr Xi’s administration.
Their host surprised them with a sharp warning that China would reform
on its own terms, while pointedly reminding them of the British empire’s
aggression during the “opium wars” against the Qing dynasty. A month later, as
China-US trade tensions were escalating, a group of US business figures
opposed to Mr Trump’s tariffs were taken aback by how cocky and
incurious Mr Wang appeared. “He was Philosopher King Wang and they were
all his students in an extended lecture,” said one person briefed on the
meeting. “There was a lot of ‘we know you better than you know us’ and
not a single question for this group of senior US executives who are
about as plugged in as it gets in Washington. He felt like he had it all
figured out.” Mr Wang, Mr Xi and Mr
Liu would soon learn that they did not have it all figured out — and
especially not Mr Trump, who is now likely to announce his intention to
place punitive tariffs on all Chinese exports to the US, which totalled
more than $500bn last year. Mr Wang’s choice of
company this past week suggests that he is still struggling to get to
grips with the US president. His hastily arranged meeting with old
friends from Wall Street seemed particularly desperate, given their
demonstrated inability over recent months to dissuade Mr Trump from
pushing ahead with his trade war. But it appears that China’s
vice-president does not know where else to turn, other than the movies. |