China looking ahead at a time many are not
One of the most striking aspects about China, particularly to outsiders, is the level and quality of debate that takes place here.
This is particularly the case at the China Development Forum, which recently concluded in Beijing.
“There is no equivalent to this forum in the world,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook at the conclusion of his address to the final session.
And it has to be said there are not many events that one attends where every second person you meet seems to have won a Nobel Prize or is head of Google, BP, Total, Baidu or any other household-name corporations you care to mention.
The arrival of proper Spring weather in the sumptuous surroundings of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, with temperatures over 20 C at last, gave this year’s forum an immediate lift.
It was the event 19th installment.
It is always the first Statelevel international conference held after the two sessions.
Many who attend are veterans of the forum. Stephen Roach, the well-known China expert and a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University, was attending his 18th forum.
It is the one time in the year that many of the experts truly engage with China, and they sit like the College of Cardinals as Chinese ministers and other keynote speakers deliver speeches and presentations.
One of the speeches that attracted a lot of interest was by Yi Gang, the newly appointed governor of the People’s Bank of China, who spoke about the country’s further opening its financial sector.
The theme of this year’s forum was “China in the New Era”, which provided an opportunity for intellectuals to engage — some for the first time — with many of the ideas underpinning China’s new direction.
What makes the discussions interesting are the very big concepts and ideas that tend to get ignored in the routine daily news.
Nicholas Stern, a British economist and climate change specialist from the London School of Economics, said the next 20 years are vital for human civilization if we didn’t want to see catastrophic environmental damage, which would result in London being next into the sea or snow vanishing from the Himalayas.
During this time the world economy is set to double, with an average global GDP increase of 3 percent. Infrastructure investment is also expected to double.
Stern said that everything might depend on China’s Belt and Road Initiative deploying the latest green technology in building new infrastructure.
What China will be in 2050 as it passes the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, including becoming a modern socialist country in all respects, was also discussed.
Ian Goldin, former economics adviser to Nelson Mandela when he was South Africa’s president, is now a professor of globalization and development at Oxford University.
He first came to China in 1982 and predicted that the country would have an annual per capita income of $35,000 at today’s prices, putting it firmly among the world’s high-income nations.
Not all jobs will have been replaced by robots, and Chinese people will be working in their 70s and 80s.
The world economy will also be very different, with 80 percent of it made up by emerging market nations — China being chief among them.
What makes the forum attractive to many of those who attend is that there is a sense that China in its new era feels like a one place that is looking forward in a world that too often now seems to be looking backward.