C (21:31)

Yeah, sorry.

A (21:32)

Okay, thank you. Well, since Xi Jinping launched the unprecedented anti corruption campaign in late 2012, more than 100,000 people have been indicted for corruption. Mostly politicians and officials, including hundreds of high ranking officials as a result of it. Xi Jinping's public popularity in China is at all time high among older people. Certainly much higher than that of his two predecessors like Jiang Zemin or Hu Jinta. I know some people in China even start comparing Xi with Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong, believe or not. However, I think more than three years later, the anti corruption campaign is still continuing. So the inevitable question will be how long and how far will Xi's anti corruption campaign continue? Should there be any other more effective ways to deal with the anti corrupt, to deal with the corruption rather than the political campaigns. For instance, setting up a more transparent political system or governance system, opening up media to be the check and balance, etc. Although we may not be able to see any more big tigers like this wall in the coming year. However, I think we could still be amazed by the efficiency and unpredictability of the party's disciplinary investigators these days. Do you recognize him? This guy actually is called Wang Bao. Literal translation is like a secure Wang. However, he's not secure anymore. He's the former Minister of National Bureaus of Statistics, if you remember. Actually a few days ago he was chairing a media briefing in front of hundreds of journalists. However, two hours later, only two hours, he was taken away by the investigators and for corruption. Ironically, I remember on the day for some media in China, actually the news of him being investigated came out even quicker than the news of him giving the media briefing on the day. So ironic. He was also actually removed from his post few days later, although we still don't know what he has, you know, actually done. Yeah, any secure things he's done, I don't know. Yeah, so I think that's some questions, you know, we need to ask about it. The last question I want to share with you know, audience here is where would Belt and Road go? Over the last three years, I think she has been everywhere. She was perhaps the most troubled head of state in the world. After paying, listen to this, 20 foreign visits, spending 138 days overseas in three years and traveled 400,000 miles or kilometers, I would say during those three years. I think to a certain extent it also reflects that China has now become a very active player in global diplomacy. I also think that the recent visit by Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia and Iran and when two countries are are at also shows that China is more confident to deal with the potential tension and also controversy, no doubt. I think One Belt One Road is a very ambitious and far reaching grand strategy from China. If it worked, China will strengthen significantly its position globally. However, what I can say is it wouldn't be easy because its success will largely depend on the very delicate situation of the countries concerned. Perhaps the official launch of EIIB Asia Infrastructure Investment bank will help a bit. Again, I can't wait to have more updates from experts at these sessions on these issues later this afternoon. I think. Before I finish, I also like to say a few words about prospects of Sino British cooperation. When Chinese President Xi was visiting this country last October, both sides signed more than 40 billion pounds of investment and cooperation agreements, including 6 billion pounds Chinese investment in the Hinckley Point nuclear plant project which is on the left, also actually on the right. I would also like to mention investors from both countries will also be launching a special fund to support film producers in this country to tap on the lucrative and fast growing film market in China which recorded 44 billion RMB in box office revenue last year and again a massive increase of 48% than the previous year. So I look forward to more good news about Sino British cooperation in the year of Monkey. Thank you very much for your patience and happy New Year to you all. Thank you.

B (27:46)

Thank you Mr. Lee, for your speech. Now let's welcome Mr. David Snell, PwC London clients and markets partner. Ms. Snell, please.

C (28:10)

Shen shengman ni men hao. And I'm afraid that's all I can do, so thank you for bearing with me. I've been practicing that for at least two weeks. Well, firstly, on behalf of PwC, I'd like to welcome you all to this, this fantastic forum. And I know today you're going to listen to some really esteemed speakers on their specialist subjects and I'm too very much looking forward to hearing what they have to say. What I wanted to do was just to give you some of my experiences working in China as a businessman working with Chinese companies and I wanted to go back to when I firstly when I started with price forhousecoopers 30 years ago. And in fact I joined the firm from a small university which you may have heard of called King's College London. So I'm sure you all know them well and respect them and love them. So it's good to be back here. Actually, last time I was here I think we were up to no good back in 1985. So I think doing business back in 1985 in China was significantly more challenging than than it is today. And I remember when I joined the firm, communication with the rest of the world was really difficult. We had no email, something we all take for granted, no fax machines, no social media. And if you wanted to talk to China, you either had the telephone or if you were really sophisticated, you had something called a telex machine, which I hope none of you have ever had the pleasure of having to work, work. Trust me, it wasn't fantastic. But since that day, I think, or that time reform and opening up policy has moved on a lot. It was still very much in its infancy back in the 1980s. And the really great news is 70% of the world's population lifted out of poverty between 1985 and 2010 were all Chinese. So I think we can all see the benefit that, that this policy has had on Chinese and Chinese people. We've seen currency and foreign investment restrictions removed and lightened and travel too. Back in 1996, I think there were around 9 million air passengers in and around China today it's 353 million passengers. An incredible increase. We've seen GDP increase 75 times since that time. But actually in population, no doubt as a consequence of some of the things you're going to hear about later, has only increased by 40%. And some of these numbers, other numbers are staggering. 172 fold increase in exports and a 99 fold increase in imports. A truly staggering achievement in what is a relatively short period of time. And I wanted to put, whether you can see this or not, this particular one is looking at Shanghai where I was just over Christmas in 1980 and how the Bund has changed since then to 2012 and it continues to move on. It's changed a bit more since then, I can tell you. The other picture is a picture of Beijing. I was also in Beijing and I wouldn't really want to be riding a bicycle across some of those roads I saw whilst we were there. It has moved on a lot. And you may think that 30 years is a long time, so that's probably understandable that things have moved on. But I was, in 2010, I was working in a city in northern China, Jinzhou, and the first time I went, we traveled across quite a lot of the agricultural land. Most of that land was being worked by hand and by animals. Most of the trains were steam trains. We went back in 2012 and the working of the land had become very much more mechanized. There was a new airport and massive changes to the infrastructure in two years. And I think for me that really sort of reinforced the pace of change that is going on in China. And this forum therefore aptly called, really entitled Navigating Complexity. So doing business in a fast changing world is not easy, it's complicated, it is not straightforward at all. And if you're there working, you have to be agile and you have to be able to adapt to changing situations very quickly. And I'll just go back a couple. There we go. Now, I think for me anyway, what I see in terms of China, I think it has many advantages over some of our Western economies. And that's partly because I think governmental and political systems can take a longer term view than perhaps some of the Western economies. And if you look at the cycle here in the uk, it's probably five years at best and then you're looking at a new government. And what this slide is just putting up is just one small extract from the five Year Plan. And this is the economy aspects of it. You can see the importance of Renminbi Markets and I'm really pleased that London hopefully will have a major part to play in those markets going forward. Cyber economy. You know I mentioned about the difficulties in communication back in the 1980s. Well, the importance of the Internet is only ever going to increase and I think there are some good measures that the government have outlined in terms of their plans for improving Internet communication, speed of Internet etc. And then finally in number six, I just wanted to highlight the international economy and I think the need for new global businesses coming out of China so Chinese local businesses becoming international and businesses that can innovate and perhaps businesses that can move away from some of the old heavy industries into new technologies. And I myself have seen that happening in what has been a relatively short period of time. That of course means there are many cross border opportunities and it's great that those cross border opportunities are good for the uk. UK is now the second largest EU investor in China as well as China's largest trading partner here. The recent visit by the Chinese President Xi Jinping has seen nearly £40 billion worth of trade, trade and investment deals and they spanned a really wide range of sectors. And I think Chinese business is seeking opportunities overseas perhaps to substitute for slowing domestic growth, which again I think can only be a good thing for international trade and London. Because I think very much when I talk to Chinese businesses thinking about particularly Europe, their first place to think about is often London for many, many different reasons, which puts us in a great position. So you heard about the one belt, one road. I think London's rapidly becoming a base from which to realize that so called one belt, one road policy. So now it's a great time to be considering how China and the UK can work together. But I wanted to finish with just outlining some challenges which is probably not that easy to read, but hopefully you can get the general sense of things. This is an extract from the American Chamber of Commerce and their latest business survey. And I think you heard about the anti corruption policy. I think it's very interesting to see. If you look back into 2011 corruption featuring heavily 2012, 2013, they're no longer on the list of worries and challenges of doing doing business in China. So I think that is a good example of how governmental policies can quickly actually impact on how business is conducted in China. There are negatives to that working in Beijing recently, I think it's inevitably had an effect on people's fear of doing business to be seen in meetings publicly. So whilst it's a good thing, I think there are consequences of these things which need to be borne in mind, I think, underlining my point around old heavy industries, there's no question that labor costs in China are increasing and there's no question that there are other countries that are now competing against China. So for me, underlying the need to move away from old heavy industries.

A (36:51)

I.

C (36:51)

Think I'd add a couple of other things that aren't on there. In terms of my experiences of working in China, I said that communication has improved a lot and it's a lot easier than it was 30 years ago. But language is still a barrier. As you've heard my poor attempts at Chinese. I think there are more people in English speaking countries that need to speak Mandarin and I would welcome that. And I think there's an importance which is possibly quite often not given enough attention around cultural differences. My first trip to China was in 2006, and I think it took me a long time to really understand how different we were as people and cultures and how that impacted on the way we conduct business and the way we deal with each other in meetings. So that is really an important factor to consider when doing business. So to finish, you know, you heard a lot just now. I think perhaps from my perspective, the golden age of business in China is perhaps drawing to a close. We heard about entering a new normal. I like to see this as the dawning of a new age and a new era where we see longer and more stable platforms from which to build business and global businesses, and global businesses on the global stage that are actually Chinese businesses. So thank you and I hope you enjoy the rest of the forum.

A (38:15)

Thank you.

B (38:26)

Thank you, Mr. Snell, for your speech. So now we will proceed to our parallel discussions. If you choose the parallel discussion on One Country, Two System, please be back at this theater in 10 minutes. If you choose the climate change and energy, please proceed to the Wolfson Theater, which is next door. If you have any question, please not hesitate to ask one of our volunteers. Thank you.

A (39:14)

It's.

C (39:40)

It's.

A (40:05)

It's.

C (43:04)

It's.