“American business has gone from being the bridge between China and the U.S. to all-too-often being the battleground as national economies go from globalization to weaponization when it comes to technology and all the leading industries of the future. CEOs are struggling to get their heads around this as it…

Business should not focus on GDP predictions or potential stimulus measures but whether China’s recent market oriented shift is real and lasting

James McGregor, APCO Worldwide, joins Morgan Brennan and the ‘CNBC Special: Taking Stock’ to discuss the disappearance of Bao Fan, a Chinese tech investor who seems to have gone missing.

“He has an economy that’s the worst in 30 years,” McGregor said Tuesday in a television interview on the sidelines of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore. “He’s got youth unemployment that they say is 20% — who knows how high it is. Internationally, China’s reputation is very low.” “And so he has…

“He was one of the core reformers,” says James McGregor, an author and China-focused business consultant. “He represents what China could have been: a real competitor in the world, open and yet still with its own system and its own integrity. Now China stands in opposition to all the systems and…

“The U.S. business community loved China — there were always tensions, but there used to be a sense of opportunity and partnership. For China to turn the business community sour on China took hard work, but China did it,” Jim McGregor, who lived in China for 30 years as a…

The pressures are not only coming from the United States. Companies are increasingly facing a complicated global patchwork of export restrictions and data storage laws, including in the European Union. Chinese leaders have begun pursuing “wolf warrior” diplomacy, in which they are trying to teach other countries to think twice…

Honeywell was a pioneer in a localization approach that has since become something of a template for a number of other multinationals doing business in China, according to James McGregor, the head of consulting firm APCO Worldwide’s China business…. It is becoming harder for multinationals to avoid controversy. “What looks…

“Reformers in China carefully monitored the original TPP negotiations with the hope that China joining the TPP could lead to domestic reforms,’’ said James McGregor, the chairman of the consultancy APCO Worldwide, Greater China. “Those days are gone. In its new bid to join, China will likely try to use the…

In practice, “dual circulation” seems aimed just as much at opening the door to foreign companies in order to make them dependent on China, increasing Beijing’s leverage over the rest of the world. “China aims to make international companies allies in pushing back against their own governments’ anti-China actions,” says…

“America’s leading companies must be in the China market and have access to Chinese innovation in order to maintain global leadership,” said Jim McGregor, China chairman of APCO worldwide. “They can’t be forced into a choice between the U.S. or China. They may have to create structural workarounds with spin-offs…