China is willing to be “a partner and a friend” of the United States, Chinese leader Xi Jinping told American business leaders in San Francisco on Wednesday, as he sought to court US businesses amid a decline in foreign investment in China.

In a speech evoking decades of shared history and laden with symbols of warm US-China ties, Xi told a dinner event on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum that the most fundamental question shaping bilateral relations is whether they the countries are rivals or partners.

“If we regard each other as the biggest rival, the most significant geopolitical challenge and an ever-pressing threat, it will inevitably lead to wrong policies, wrong actions and wrong results,” Xi told an audience that included Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Source: CNN Business