Samsung chief meets China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing

Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on March 28 as China continues to make efforts to boost private investment sentiment amid rising economic uncertainties on the back of looming U.S. tariff plans.

The meeting between the two comes 10 years after the Boao Forum in 2015.

The Chinese president had a meeting with business leaders from around the world on Friday, according to Xinhua News Agency, with Lee in attendance along with chief executives of Saudi Aramco, Qualcomm, BMW, Toyota and FedEx.

SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jeong was also present.

The meeting with Xi took place Friday morning at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

“I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all the foreign enterprises that have participated in and supported China’s development,” Xi was quoted by Reuters as saying.

“Foreign enterprises contribute to one-third of China’s imports and exports, one-quarter of industrial added value and one-seventh of tax revenue, creating more than 30 million jobs.”

Xi’s economic diplomacy comes as China faces a number of challenges in its markets, including slow growth and low foreign direct investment.

Despite achieving a target growth rate of 5 percent in 2024, it is still a far cry from the growth of over 10 percent logged in the 2000s.

Its foreign direct investment last year hit a nine-year low, plunging by 27.1 percent to 826.3 billion yuan ($113.8 billion).

Xi has been making welcoming overtures to global businesses as continuous tension with the U.S. — which intensified since the start of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term — has led companies to shun making bets in China, unwilling to risk getting mired in a geopolitical conflict.

Last year, Xi met with CEOs and academic leaders from U.S. companies and committees such as Blackstone, Qualcomm and the U.S.-China Business Council.

Early this year, he held high-profile meetings with Jack Ma of Alibaba and Liang Wenfeng of DeepSeek.

China’s courting of global companies could align with Samsung Electronics’ need for new growth drivers and opportunities amid steep competition in smartphones and semiconductors.

Its business dealings in China are not meager, considering it logged 64.9 trillion won ($44.3 billion) in revenue in the country last year, a 50 percent year-on-year jump, per its business report of 2024.

The company operates two chip factories in China — one in Xi’an committed to NAND flash memory and another one in Suzhou for back-end process of semiconductors.

SK hynix also runs DRAM facilities in Wuxi, a packaging factory in Chongqing and NAND facilities in Dalian.

Lee left for a business trip to China earlier in the week to attend the annual China Development Forum, which took place on March 23 and 24 in Beijing. It was his first official overseas itinerary after being cleared of legal charges related to a 2015 merger.

He then visited Xiaomi’s EV factory and met with CEO Lei Jun, followed by a visit to BYD headquarters and a meetup with its chairman and CEO, Wang Chuanfu.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]