What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox.
Singapore: China has spent much of this year telling the world it is open for business. Nothing could have damaged that image further than the suspended death sentence it handed down this week to Australian academic and Chinese government critic Yang Hengjun.
Yang Hengjun has been detained in China since January 2019.Credit: Tanya Lake
Chinese Premier Li Qiang told world leaders at Davos in January that China was “a country most worthy of trust” and that choosing to do business there “is not a risk, but an opportunity”.
Big business no longer shares his optimism. Last year, for the first time, foreign companies not only failed to reinvest in China, but started selling their existing investments, pulling more than $152 billion out of its economy, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Beijing’s campaign against foreigners working in China is playing a leading role in driving them out.
In April and May, Chinese authorities raided the offices of US consultancy firm Capvision. Then exit bans were placed on executives from financial advisory firm Kroll and global investment bank Nomura. In October, a Japanese businessman working for drugmaker Astellas Pharma was formally arrested on espionage charges.
In January, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that a former Pfizer employee had been sentenced to five years in jail for “obtaining intelligence for overseas actors”. The guilty verdict for 70-year-old British citizen Ian Stones was handed down in September last year. Beijing just took five months to make it public.
These executives may well have committed crimes, but it is impossible to know what the red lines are in China’s black box of a justice system. That fear is spooking businesses, making them hesitate to send staff into what was once the world’s top investment destination.
China says it’s ‘worthy of trust’ but detentions and a death penalty are spooking businesses
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08.02.2024
What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox.
Singapore: China has spent much of this year telling the world it is open for business. Nothing could have damaged that image further than the suspended death sentence it handed down this week to Australian academic and Chinese government critic Yang Hengjun.
Yang Hengjun has been........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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