By JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Wednesday that his bank would exit China if the U.S. government ordered him to.
“If the American government makes me leave China, I’m leaving China,” Dimon said at the DealBook Summit during a discussion about a potential future conflict over Taiwan. “If there’s a war in Taiwan, you would take all bets off.”
JPMorgan, which says on its website that it has been active in China for a century, does investment and corporate banking, payments and asset management there. Growing geopolitical tensions, fueled by wars in Ukraine and Israel, have raised concerns that China could move to annex Taiwan.
“No one thinks it’s going to happen; it may happen,” Dimon said about war over Taiwan. “That would be really bad for the world and really bad for China.”
Dimon called relations with China, the world’s second-largest economy, “a very complicated subject” and said that engagement with both China and the U.S. government was necessary.
“I think it’s good for an American bank to be there to help multinationals around the world and China with their own development if it makes sense,” Dimon said. “If for some reason the American government says ‘Nope, can’t do that anymore,’ then so be it.”
Dimon also pointed out that while the U.S. maintains good relations with Mexico and Canada, China has “done a pretty good job angering all the people around them,” and the country has “terrible demographics.”
The bank advises Chinese clients including fast-fashion retailer Shein and Tiktok parent company ByteDance.
Dimon addressed security concerns related to TikTok, saying, “You can imagine the due diligence and work we do to figure out the truth about those things.”
“If some of those people are doing things that we think are truly bad, we would not bank them,” he said.
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