It’s Time to Replace the US China Business Lobby

The Pro-Beijing Advocates of the US Business Community Need to Leave

The National Committee of US-China Relations, US Chamber of Commerce, and US China Business Council, represent the interests of China over those of the United States in dealing with US and China business issues. Their funding is unclear, their track record awful, and they have one move; shine the shoes of their Beijing masters and beg. It’s an advocacy approach that is no longer tenable, if it ever really was.  China is in decline, and US business needs a lobby that fights for US interests in tandem with this new economic reality.

This is no “human rights first” argument.  I can read a P&L, and have done way too much business in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the rest of Asia to know US business is not going to walk away from a market the size of China because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is violating the human rights of a few million people.  Just not the way business works in the free market, or a socialist system. 

Yet China is not the market it was 10 years ago.  Population decline, combined with the anti-free market policies of Xi JinPing have turned China from a growth engine to a flat market with limited upside.

With few exceptions in the US business community the bloom is off the Chinese market, and with it the willingness of US CEOs to tolerate the anti-market practices of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  Whether top law firm Akin Gump closing its Beijing office, or Apple shifting production out of China, there is a new awareness in the US that while China remains a large market that can’t be ignored; China is a stagnant market where what worked in 2004 doesn’t work in 2024.

Change in market functions will bring on a change in how US business interacts with the CCP. No business is going to go out of their way to poke the Panda, but also the days of carrying water in the US for the CCP are ending. To match this new China economic reality there is a need for a shift away from the current shoe shinning by the China lobby of US business.  It’s time for the fulfillment of a market structure in China where US companies can thrive by boosting their existing business channels, as well as plowing into what were off limits market segments in the past.  No Amazon in Beijing, no Temu in Boston.

To access those closed off marketplaces it’s not a matter of sucking up to the Chinese by carrying their water in DC, rather, it’s about pressuring the CCP for that expanded access in the China market.  It’s about starting fights.

There is no one in the China lobby who fights for US companies right now.  The leaders of US business lobby groups focused on China such as Steve Orlins of NCUSCR, Suzanne Clark of the US Chamber of Commerce, or Craig Allen of the US-China Business Council, are quislings who still think abandoning US economic values and shinning the shoes of CCP leaders is the way forward.  Steve Orlins recently regaled an audience how as a young man he learned valuable lessons from Chairman Mao. (What the hell could any decent person learn from Mao?)

The one’s to lead this change away from shilling for access are hard to find, but I would think it’s the US Chamber of Commerce that can lead the charge. There is some sanity on their Board, and China is part of what they do, not all of what they do as are most other China related business lobby’s.

The Board needs to clear out the old China hands in the Chamber and hire some DC sharks who don’t have a favorite Chinese opera. I find insentitivity to those who are shafting US business and the American people a welcome trait.

China is a valuable market, but it’s not the market it once was in terms of growth.  US business needs to fight for new opportunities.  The current shills who claim to represent US business in China are ineffective.  In business, that’s the only criteria that counts.