CEO of JP Morgan Chase and former board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Jamie Dimon is recognized as the nation’s preeminent banker. Since 2005, when he became head of JP Morgan, he has transformed the bank not only into a national financial treasure but also a behemoth in global financial markets. When Dimon speaks, markets and politicians listen. He possesses global gravitas.
China is the top adversary of the United States. Chinese espionage against the U.S. is relentless in its varied saturation, absorbing a vast proportion of the FBI's counterintelligence resources. We learned just this week, for example, that Chinese spies attempted to penetrate a U.S. military base in Alaska. The agents’ vehicle carried a drone . Recently, a Chinese military aircraft dangerously harassed a U.S. military aircraft that was flying in international airspace. China continues to challenge navigation rights in the international waters of the South China Sea. Most importantly, China routinely threatens to conquer Taiwan, home of the world’s most important semiconductor company, Taiwan Semiconductor. Without semiconductors fabricated by Taiwan Semiconductor, the artificial intelligence economic revolution would stop .
Jamie Dimon has openly acknowledged that he has political ambitions. Some of his peers suggest that he should run for the White House. Which begs a question: as a top member of the national economic elite and as an aspiring national political figure, why is Jamie Dimon serving as a foil in China’s strategic plan to supplant the U.S. as the foremost global power?
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As a member of the global financial elite, Dimon’s visit to China to attend a JP Morgan financial markets conference sends a clear signal to non-Chinese companies and to global investors that China is attractive for investment. His visit will draw foreign capital and investment into China. This is something that Beijing desperately needs because China is experiencing not only capital flight — wealthy Chinese are afraid of China’s supreme ruler, Xi Jinping.
China is also in the early stages of an economic doom loop. Its economy is faltering. China’s economy will not collapse but it will slowly atrophy as its population declines, as its labor market continues to slide toward global noncompetitiveness, and as the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party diverts scarce capital from the dynamic private sector to the moribund state sector. Yet, by attending a JP Morgan-sponsored conference in China, Dimon is implicitly suggesting that China is a good place for U.S. investors to put their money. Most certainly, that is false. China is not investable. Is Dimon violating his fiduciary duties to the customers and shareholders of JP Morgan?
Put simply, Dimon is serving as an economic lackey of China. In doing so, Dimon is harming U.S. national security. Dimon is propping up a decaying political and economic regime whose principal goal is to make the U.S. subservient to the Chinese state. Dimon may be motivated by greed for his bank and for his personal wealth, which reputedly exceeds $1 billion.
Whatever the motivations, Dimon is wrong to visit China. His bank is wrong to tout investment products based in China. If Dimon does have ambitions for high political office, he should immediately distance himself and JP Morgan from this American adversary.
James Rogan is a former U.S. foreign service officer who later worked in finance and law for 30 years. He writes a daily note on finance and the economy, politics, sociology, and criminal justice.
Dimon calls for Washington-Beijing engagement in first China visit since 2021 controversy
"You're not going to fix these things if you are just sitting across the Pacific yelling at each other, so I'm hoping we have real engagement," Dimon said, according to Reuters.
In November 2021, Dimon expressed "regret" over remarks that JPMorgan would last longer than China's ruling party.
JPMorgan Chase and Company President and CEO Jamie Dimon testifies before a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing on “Annual Oversight of the Nation’s Largest Banks”, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 22, 2022.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon on Wednesday called for “real engagement” between policymakers in Washington and Beijing, as Sino-U.S. relations continue to fray.
Speaking at the JPMorgan Global China Summit in Shanghai — in his first visit to China since his 2021 apology for joking that JPMorgan would outlast the Chinese Communist Party — Dimon said that security and trade disputes between the world’s two largest economies over are “resolvable.”
“You’re not going to fix these things if you are just sitting across the Pacific yelling at each other, so I’m hoping we have real engagement,” Dimon said, according to Reuters.
He advocated for a “de-risking” of the economic ties between the East and West rather than for a full-scale decoupling, as the Wall Street giant seeks to boost its presence in China.
In November 2021, Dimon expressed “regret” over remarks that JPMorgan would outlast China’s ruling party, seeking to limit damage to the bank’s growth ambitions in the country. The comments that invoked Beijing’s ire came shortly after JPMorgan won regulatory approval to become the first foreign company to establish full ownership of a securities brokerage in China.
National security concerns also underpin a souring of relations between the two superpowers. The U.S. on Tuesday accused a Chinese fighter jet of engaging in an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” while intercepting a U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace over the South China Sea.