Wall Street helped build modern China. But is it now being cast aside?

Beijing once courted Wall Street’s titans, hailing them as ‘old friends of China’. But the relationship today is far frostier

For decades, Wall Street titans – from former Goldman Sachs chief Henry Paulson to Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman and Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio – were hailed as “old friends of China”, feted by senior officials and granted rare access to the country’s top leadership.

Today, while American financiers continue to visit China and maintain commercial links, those private meetings with the top leadership have largely diminished, even as Beijing gradually opens its capital markets.

The shift has raised a crucial question for global investors: can Wall Street maintain its bridge to Beijing amid a changing US-China relationship?

“The decline of such roles suggests they have stopped being useful,” said Christopher Marquis, Sinyi professor of Chinese management at Cambridge Judge Business School.

“China’s economy no longer needs foreign bankers’ capital and expertise the way it did 20-plus years ago.”

The “honeymoon period” for Wall Street and Beijing dates to China’s reform era in the late 1990s and 2000s, when Beijing relied heavily on foreign financial expertise to modernise its economy.