this is bbc news. the headlines... switzerland's biggest bank, ubs, is in advanced talks to buy all or part of its troubled rival credit suisse. efforts are concentrating on reaching a deal before the stock markets resume trading on monday. the kremlin says vladimir putin's visit to mariupol — a city captured during the russian invasion of ukraine — was unscheduled. he flew there by helicopter on saturday evening. no news of his trip was made public before he returned to russia. former prime minister borisjohnson will publish evidence in his defence ahead of a grilling by mps over whether he misled parliament about covid rule—breaking parties.

mrjohnson denies misleading mps. serbia's president, aleksandar vucic, says he has "declined" to sign a proposal by the european union intended to normalise relations with kosovo. the eu has been trying to broker a deal, fifteen years after kosovo declared independence. you're watching bbc news. now it's time for talking business. let's take a look at what is on the show. spy balloons, tiktok and taiwan. trouble is never far away from the us china relationship so what do mounting tensions mean for the global economy? with xi in his third presidential term and joe biden halfway

through his first, strains between the world's two biggest economies have deepened so what will it take to improve them? a growing number of us firms are looking beyond china to invest their cash. the president of the american chamber of commerce in china tells us why they're having second thoughts. that is despite us—china trade hitting a record high last year and with president xi increasing his power this expert tells us what this means. when will the rivalry have the consequences for the rest of us? we'll hear from the former head of the monetary fund's china division. the man behind brands such as intercontinental, holiday inn and crowne plaza tells us by a big expansion is not stopping him sleeping despite the delicate state of the global economy. welcome to talking business weekly. the us and china are the world's two

biggest economies and for decades they have helped to power the global economy meaning that when they do well so does the rest of the world, but there is a growing amount of hostility between them whether it is spy balloons, differences over the war in ukraine, taiwan or coronavirus, those tensions are not always directly related to trade but they're having a growing impact on business deals. today the first shipment of some 480,000 bottles and cans of coke was loaded aboard a special train here in hong kong heading for china. trade and business have been at the heart of the us china relationship since the end of the 1970s when the likes of coca—cola, ibm became some of the first foreign companies to take advantage of china opening its economy up to the rest of the world. now many of the world's biggest companies are there such as walmart and the drug maker pfizer. they are among the more than 900 members of the american chamber of commerce in china.

it is one of the leading organisation is trying to smooth organisations trying to smooth business ties between the two superpowers however, the latest survey found that for the first time, china is no longer a top three investment per priority for the members of most members thinking again about where to spend their cash. and a growing number, almost half, think china has become less welcoming to foreign companies of the last year. welcoming to foreign companies over the last year. despite that sense of pessimism about the future, us china trade had a record high of $690 billion even amid the ongoing impact of the covid pandemic and lurking in the background, the tariffs or import taxes that both countries have kept him both countries have kept in place since the then us president donald trump started the trade war back in 2018. the hostilities that he personified in the trade relationship have,

if anything, deepened, spreading well beyond tariffs. since biden took power the us has posed sweeping restrictions on sales of technology to china such as semiconductors. restrictions on the likes of tiktok and moves to limit us investments in china. we made clear to the president competition not conflate. but i will make no apologies that we are investing to make america stronger. and then investing in industries will define the future that china intends to be dominating. i'm committed to work with china public in advance american interest and benefit the world but, make no mistake about it, as we made clear last week of china threatens our sovereignty will act to protect our country, and we did. while china is not closed off to other foreign countries like it used to be many are unhappy with restrictions they face and the lack of legal protections from chinese rivals but beijing sees things differently. in an unusually direct rebuke of the united states earlier this

month, the president said western countries, led by the us, have implemented all round containment, encirclement and suppression against us bringing unprecedented the severe challenges our severe challenges to our country's development. and one of his ministers explained the impact on trade. the us has taken restrictive measures against trade with china and damage the confidence and willingness of chinese and us companies to cooperate with each other. so what is the impact of all of this and the company is trying on the companies trying to navigate politics? the american chamber of commerce in china just released a new survey looking at these issues and i have been speaking to its president. great to have you on the programme with us. good to be with you. you've recently released a survey of your member and we're talking major companies like pepsi, johnson &johnson, general electric and so on, and paints a somewhat pessimistic outlook, doesn't it? companies are really tired of three years after covid. a number of things in china have made them look a bit more pessimistic.

china has been growing slower and travel has been really difficult so companies in general, their responses were more negative than they have been in a long time. what does that mean in practice? are they not putting money in in the same way? 74% said they are planning on leaving right now but it does seem to indicate companies are not willing to invest my money right now. seem to indicate companies are not willing to invest more money right now. they cited a number of reasons. number one, us china relations is a top concern for the third year in a row. number two, number of companies told us executives are just not willing to take expatriate assignments in china and then overall there is political pressure which makes it difficult to do business in china. they are trying to de—risk their supply chain and so what that means is, when companies invest, they are looking at markets other than china so they're having a china plus one strategy and realising they can no longer rely on china.

does it differ from sector to sector? while some are saying it is not a top three priority for investment other big names like mcdonalds, starbucks, ralph lauren, a lot of those are expanding and going ahead with putting my and going ahead with putting more money into china? by sector it does vary. the consumer market is probably the place for most people are optimistic. the chinese consumer has got wealthier over time, they continue to be focused on buying foreign goods are brand america so retailers are doing relatively well. there are some sectors like tech where there are rules that say tech companies should not be investing here, it is a national security concern. it is such a large economy and an important market for many foreign companies so people don't really want to divest from china. they do want to have a little bit more balanced particularly when it comes to supply chain and other issues. the chinese communist party

is increasingly trying to control or at the very least influence china's private companies to make sure their interests are aligned with those of the state. many of those companies work with your members. how difficult does the blurring of the line between the chinese state and private enterprise make life for your members? it is a very complicated market and you are right. when the chinese government started to take a bigger role in private enterprises, it is space that we watched very carefully to try to understand where the dynamics on the ground. in general, china has been a good market for us companies in the space that we can compete and now the line is starting to blur so we will continue to advocate for access but watch this space. where do you see any source of hope that relations could improve? one area for hope is us and china trade continues

to flourish to our two economies are very much tied together whether people realise it or not in the truth is we cannot afford conflate because both economies depend on each other. conflict because both economies depend on each other. we think that business from us companies in china continues to be a stabilising factor in this us china relationship. thank you very much. thank you. china's economy is going through more reforms as president xi tries to shape it in his image so are those tensions with the us a threat to the ambition to get economic growth back up to 5% a year? i've been speaking to the chief economist at a bank. thank you for having me. despite the tension between us and china over so many things from covid to ukraine and those suspected spy balloons, trade between the two countries hit a record high last year, even also with problems caused by china's covid lockdowns. why do you think that trade relationship is proving to be so resilient?

ever since covid has started, the global dependence on china over creased rather decreased including the trade relations between china and the us. there was a strong dollar, overheated us economy and record high wage growth so the demand for china's export actually increased furthermore and i don't see that trend reversing anytime soon. beijing has used the ambitions of corporate america to help fuel its economic growth but now that chinese growth there is, i think it is fair to say, faltering in the country has huge debts, does beijing still want us companies to invest and if so why? beijing still wants us companies to invest in china and that attitude, i don't believe, will change anytime soon because, for one thing, foreign investment including that from the us is free money and china needs all kinds of investments to provide a kind of financing and technology for its transition into a high—quality growth model. and right now there is still a high

presence of american companies in china. some of them might have a pressure of outsourcing some work to asia or even back to an american continent but overall being in china for china is becoming a bigger trend. for a lot of the companies, the consideration is about how to take advantage of china being the largest single market in the world and about the long—term sustainable growth so there are no emerging markets that can replace china. after the recent national people's congress and covid lockdown out of the way what changes does china want to see and its trade relationship with the united states? the new economic policy is stressing about a lot economic security. last year, when we heard the reports of the chinese party congress it was quite dominant about the supply side of the economy

including the supply chain security, energy security and food security. it was unprecedented because, in the past ten years, before covid, it was mostly about how to stimulate domestic demand to promote a bigger and stronger consumer market and now the narrative has changed and when we have the cat the trade relations between the two, and when we see the trade relations between the two, there is a clear decoupling in the high—tech sector and whether they can be more decoupling in other sectors remains to be seen and we hope not but that is one of the biggest uncertainties. really good to have you on the programme and to get your thoughts. thank you very much. the united states and china the world's two biggest economies by a long way. combined, they make more than 40% of the global economy so i've been talking to a former head of the china division at the international monetary fund who is now a professor of global trade policy at cornell university about how important

the relationship is. welcome to the programme. my pleasure. thank you. despite their political differences, tariffs, the restrictions of the covid pandemic, us china trade to hit us china trade hit a record high last year. how do you think they manage that and how important is it for the help of the wider global economy? the reality is china needs a lot of products especially technology products from the us in the us has a lot of companies that run their supply chains through china so these countries are pretty enmeshed with each other but, in addition, the tenor of global trade are set by the relationship between these two countries. american companies are some of the most biggest and influential in the world and, for years, they've been moving manufacturing to china with its cheap labour but if that trend is firmly reversed, do you think it will inevitably result in higher prices and thus more inflation for the rest of us?

first of all, it is going to take a while even for companies that might want to shift away from china because china is a very large country with a very strong manufacturing base so finding alternatives to china is not going to be easy but there is certainly an attempt by american companies to shift away from china towards countries that are seen as being more geopolitically aligned with the us and where there might be fewer disruptions related to trade or other sorts of economic and political tensions so this might mean higher prices but it might also mean more stable output and production so, overall, consumers might actually benefit rather than lose. president xi is beginning a third term in office. new people have been promoted to help him on the economy. what do those choices tell us about the direction that china's economy is heading and what about its approach

to trade with the us? one might see china turn to what's been a more state dominated economy but many of the people being appointed to the top positions especially in times of economic and financial and regulatory agencies, certainly do seem to have loyalty to president xi as an important carrying card but in addition these are people who have shown competence and many of the appointments and a lot of the key agencies do suggest that the president wants to carry on in terms of continuity of at least very modest financial and market orientated reform so i think china does want to continue to engage with the us and the rest of the world but on its own terms. the talk seem to be increasingly fiery from both presidents. do you think that is a sign that a bigger reckoning is coming and that trade relationships between the two might worsen? and what might the impact of that be? 0ne hopes that reason will prevail and we'll get to a stage for the two countries recognise that

economically their fortunes are significantly tied together. and that being at loggerheads will is not going to serve either of their economies very well. the difficulty right now is that the tensions are rising and spilling over into the economic sphere as well and having politically —based recriminations against each other might be one thing but if this leads to escalating trade and financial hostilities both countries are going to have to pay a cost. thank you so much for being on the programme. it has been my pleasure. thank you. the travel and tourism industry is one of the most important for the global economy and before the pandemic it accounted for 10% of the world'sjobs, more than 230 million positions more than 330 million positions and while the worst of covid seems to have passed, the industry is asking when it will finally get back to pre—pandemic levels. it is one of the challenges facing intercontinental hotels group, one of the biggest in the world

with more than 6000 hotels spread across brands such as holiday inn. so i've been catching up with its chief executive. a very warm welcome to the programme. thank you for having me. globally, the un says that tourist numbers that you are still at only 63% of the pre—pandemic level. what has it been like for your company and how much longer do you think it will take to fully recover? it has been an extraordinary journey and when you think about the world the united states has principally recovered. we saw sequential improvement every month in the second half of last year and ahead of 2019 levels. europe and the uk quite robust in terms of travel but the rest of the world was still shut down for portions of 2022 so asia pacific began to open up in the second half and china opened up in the beginning of this year so those markets will continue to into 2023 and 2024 and generally people think the world will be recovered by 2025

but travel is back and it is really exciting to see it. china is important to your company. 10%, around 650 of your hotels are there. what difference will it make to your company's performance in the coming year now china has finally lifted its covid restrictions? it is going to be very significant. that market was closed. effectively, hotels were shut down, people were not travelling and now restrictions have been lifted it his back. we saw chinese new year to be about 90% of 2019 levels. i looked at the first couple of months of this year. 96% recovered so it is exciting to see. it will be a significant lift for our profits this year. your wider industry, travel and tourism, was responsible for 10% of the world's jobs. that is a huge number. since the pandemic many countries have seen worker shortages. how much of a struggle is it for you to find the workers that you need? it has been a significant challenge for the service industry, without question.

we saw so many people leave the workforce. now that were into recovery we see people come back and so we can use the us as an example. you saw a jobs report they created 500,000 jobs in the us. 125,000 jobs were in hospitality and leisure. 100,000 in hospitality. they want to work for great companies so we have to continue to focus on great benefits, great pay, great experiences and career development to bring people into this industry. and where you might be struggling to fill vacancies were kind of measures are you having to take because anecdotally, from my experience, i've been in hotels where the kitchen closes an hour earlier because theyjust don't have the star. you make across the industry, we've had it with just services.

now over ten luxury and lifestyle they're still providing the same service beforehand. in more mainstream hotels you're going to see housekeeping be more limited. hours of operations in restaurants but as people come back into the industry we will expand their services over time. the global economy is in a delicate place at the moment. interest rates are rising and the cost of living, ever more expensive for many people and you acknowledge there are economic uncertainties in your latest financial update. how concerned are you that consumers will view expensive hotel stays as just something they can't afford right now? when you look at our customers around the world they tend to be more into the upper middle class into being quite affluent and so when you look at their balance sheet today and again, talking about the us market is an example, there are something like 50% more savings than they had before covid and the ability to travel is what they want to do. with discretionary spending travel is one of the last things they wanted to stop so tech companies and goods companies, services are winning and travellers at the front of that.

people want to stay connected and think about how many meetings got postponed or family weddings and events don't happen or holidays got cancelled. we are seeing demand continue to grow around the world. you're planning to open something like 2000 new hotels around the world, across the various brands, incorporated brands incorporated within your company. why do you think there will be enough demand to make that sort of expansion worthwhile? if you look back over the past two decades and 18 out of the last 23 years demand faster than gdp and so effectively, we have a growing economy around the world, travel will always go faster than that. the only time it didn't was the financial crisis and during covid. we spent that trend to continue and it is growing middle classes and rising wealth. it is the desire for people to stay connected and so we expect that demand to continue over the past couple of decades and that supports the new hotel

developments around the world. new hotels are very expensive projects often requiring big loans. are high interest rates at the moment affecting the timescale? could you perhaps holding back on some of those plans? around the world we are seeing, as an industry level, a slowdown of construction so that is definitely happening because of the availability of construction paper and what is happening. great brands get lended to. we actually can go to the banks and help get that lending but it is though. ground breaks are about 50% of what they were pre—covid. we did see an acceleration to queue flowing and we expect to see an acceleration in 2024 but it is going to be a thorough growth environment but the amazing

thing is about share. so today we have 4% of the global hotel supply but 11% of the global pipeline so nearly three times as much so you're definitely seeing this in market share around the world. inflation is in many countries now falling but prices are still rising at a relatively fast pace. you have said that furniture and fittings, increasing cost by ten or 20%. how much of that you passing on to customers in terms of higher prices? so we saw our average rates and leisure increased by 14%. the businesses up about 7% so less than inflation overall. our prices have gone up but have not kept pace with inflation. we've been very focused on how to help hotel owners and operators reduce their operating costs so how we simplify the supply chain, leveraging procurement solutions across food and ff and e. and we've really been able to take cost out of how we build hotels and operate the hotel to make sure that our owners are given great

returns and our customers are getting great experiences. a room is getting more expensive? we expect rooms to continue to get more expensive but not at the same pace as inflation. the certain sectors where you are seeing prices going up. puts out a percentage are we looking at for cost of room increases with things like food and energy are among the biggest rises? it varies around the world depending on what is happening with inflation. there are certain markets they greater china where we do not see much inflation. europe and the uk are facing energy increases that are so significant whereas the us see it as less of an impact. pricing is varying from market to market and segment to segment but overall it is around inflation at those markets. building all these new hotels takes a huge amount of concrete and steel and each of those are responsible to seven or 8% of global emissions.

you depend on people flying around the world. another carbon emitting activity. all of that is damaging the planet. what are you doing to mitigate that? we have committed to our target on making sure we can reduce carbon emissions over the next decade and it is going to be a real tough ask given the fact that it is not a super energy intensive industry but it is producing greenhouse gas so we've mapped out a number of things. energy conservation which we can deploy across our state. this will reduce our energy consumption. we are in the process now designing low carbon prototypes for new build hotels. we also then going into different markets negotiating energy contracts so we've done purchasing power agreements in a couple of markets around the world to buy green energy, too, so we are able to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions last year and we will continue that year

on year but it will be a journey for us to go on. we'll have to work with governments to decarbonise the grid make our hotels energy—efficient and think about how we can have less impact on the environment overall. thank you very much. that is all for this week and you can keep up with the global economy on the bbc news website and you can reach me on social media. thank you for watching. hello there. for most of us, it's been a bright start to the day. the best of the early morning sunshine has been across southern and eastern england. so a lovely start here in woolacombe in devon. but there is a tendency for the weather to turn cloudier through the afternoon so sunshine becomes quite scarce. and for northern ireland we've got some rain on the way. that rain will spread into westernmost areas of scotland, wales and western england

by the very end of the day. temperatures on the mild side, ten to 14 degrees. and then overnight our wet weather in northern ireland pushes across scotland and into northern areas of england. now the cloud will thicken up elsewhere, could see an odd patch of drizzle, but it will be a mild night. temperatures around six or seven degrees celsius. tomorrow, expect rain at times. the wettest weather in northern ireland pushes into scotland during the day. further southwards, the cloud will tend to thicken, with some rain arriving across wales and western england through the afternoon. not too much in the way of rain across eastern england, but it will still be quite cloudy, very mild for many of us. temperatures between 13 and 16.

this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. our top stories... president vladimir putin visits mariupol — the ukrainian city which was captured by invading russian forces last year. switzerland's biggest bank, ubs, is in advanced talks to buy all or part of its troubled rival credit suisse. serbia's president has declined to sign an eu proposal to normalise relations with kosovo. the russian president, vladimir putin, has visited the ukrainian city of mariupol.