JPMorgan Chase & Co., along with its president and CEO Jamie Dimon, testify on “Annual Oversight of the Nation’s Largest Banks” at a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 22, 2022.
Evelyn Hawkstein | Reuters
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon called on policymakers in Washington and Beijing on Wednesday for “genuine engagement” as U.S.-China tensions continued.
Speaking at the JPMorgan Global China Summit in Shanghai – his first visit to China since apologizing in 2021 for joking that JPMorgan would outlast the Chinese Communist Party – Dimon said the world’s two largest Security and trade disputes between economies are “solvable”.
“If you’re just sitting across the Pacific Ocean yelling at each other, you’re not going to fix these issues, so I hope we can actually engage,” Dimon said, according to Reuters.
He advocated a “de-risking” of East-West economic relations, rather than a full decoupling, as the Wall Street giant seeks to boost its influence in China.
In November 2021, Dimon expressed “regret” over comments that JPMorgan would outlast China’s ruling party, seeking to limit damage to the bank’s growth ambitions in China. The comments that drew Beijing’s ire came not long after JPMorgan received regulatory approval to become the first foreign company to establish a wholly-owned securities brokerage in China.
Senior U.S. and Chinese business officials met last week for “candid and substantive discussions” around bilateral trade and commercial relations, the first Cabinet-level exchange between Washington and Beijing in months.
National security concerns have also contributed to the sour relationship between the two superpowers. The United States on Tuesday accused Chinese fighter jets of conducting “unnecessarily aggressive maneuvers” in intercepting a U.S. surveillance plane in international airspace in the South China Sea.