JPMorgan’s CEO is brushing off fears of a breakup between the U.S. and Chinese economies.
While Jamie Dimon predicted that “over time there’ll be less trade” between the U.S. and China, “it won’t be a decoupling, and the world will go on,” he noted in an interview with Bloomberg aired Wednesday.
Dimon is currently in Shanghai for a series of JPMorgan conferences—his first visit to mainland China since the COVID pandemic. The CEO praised the ability to travel to the country in person, saying “humanity is better off with this type of thing.”
Disagreements over issues like Taiwan and the export of sensitive technology to China are straining U.S.-China relations. In May, the heads of the G7 countries said they would pursue “de-risking” instead of “decoupling or turning inwards” when it came to China. (China argues the term simply describes a continued strategy from the U.S. and others to constrain the country.)
While JPMorgan’s CEO brushed off suggestions that he could act as a de facto diplomat, he called himself “an American patriot” and a “red-blooded, full-throated, free enterprise capitalist.”
Still, Dimon said he had “enormous respect for the Chinese people,” acknowledging the country’s “extraordinary” development. “When we do business in a country” like China, he said, “we’re there hopefully through good times and bad times.”
Chinese officials say they want to attract foreign business to revive the country’s sluggish economy after years of COVID-zero policies. Yet a series of regulatory crackdowns, including a recent campaign against consulting firms and data providers, could unnerve foreign companies considering a return to China.
Earlier this year, Chinese regulators gave JPMorgan permission to take full ownership of its China mutual fund, following earlier approvals of a fully owned securities company and futures company. Dimon at the time said the bank would bring its “full force” to the market.
Still, in a separate interview on Wednesday, Mark Leung, JPMorgan’s China CEO, admitted that the bank’s expansion in the country “will be a longer journey than we would wish to gradually build up scale and reputation to do business.”
CEO visits
Dimon is one of a handful of CEOs who have traveled to China since the country ended its COVID-zero policy last December.
Other CEOs to have recently traveled there include Apple’s Tim Cook, Intel’s Pat Gelsinger, and Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also in China this week, having arrived in Beijing on Tuesday. Musk met with senior Chinese officials, including foreign affairs minister Qin Gang. A government release said that Musk opposed a decoupling between the U.S. and China, and that the carmaker wants to expand its China business.
Musk recently suggested in an interview in mid-May that there was “a certain inevitability” to the situation over Taiwan, and that the Chinese and global economies were like “conjoined twins.”