Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping is clearly a West-Coast man. Soaking in California's excellent sunny weather, on Friday Mr. Xi enjoyed the hospitality of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, attended a Lakers game, and even managed to mend fences with Hollywood by sorting out a long-standing World Trade Organisation dispute on Chinese movie imports, a far cry from the relatively formal, sometimes-tense exchanges that he encountered in Washington a few days ago.
Even his harshest critic on this visit, his counterpart Joseph Biden, appeared to melt a little and complimented Mr. Xi on the movie deal. He said, “This agreement with China will make it easier than ever before for U.S. studios and independent filmmakers to reach the fast-growing Chinese audience, supporting thousands of American jobs in and around the film industry.”
U.S. access to China's burgeoning movies market has been a sore point for a while now and the conflict had escalated to the WTO after the government of Chinese government last year did not meet a WTO deadline to ease restrictions. According to the White House, China is a major export market for Hollywood and the U.S. enjoys a $12-billion global trade surplus on films and other audiovisual products.
The deal notwithstanding Mr. Biden, it appeared, could not resist reiterating the message that was frequently mentioned to Mr. Xi in Washington, that China had to provide U.S. businesses with a level playing field for economic competition.
“The crux of our discussions is that competition only benefits everyone if the rules to the game are fair and followed. So we will continue to work with the Vice President and the Chinese government to make sure that everyone is playing by the same rules on a level playing field,” he said, at a luncheon in honour of Mr. Xi.
