China the key toeconomic cheer

Jul 9 2008 by Alex Turner, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL-BASED China specialist Dr Kerry Brown is to address businesses on why the country matters to their future prospects.

His lecture, China: An Olympian Power, in association with the Liverpool Daily Post, will examine what China means for our economic prosperity in the coming decades.

Dr Brown is the executive director of the Liverpool Shanghai Partnership, who has worked as a diplomat in China. He believes the rise of China poses immense challenges, but also offers extraordinary new opportunities.

His talk will put China's rise in context, and explain why, for companies and organisations in Liverpool, whatever their sector, China matters.

The exposure that China will get in August with the 2008 Olympics makes it a good time to think through what the impact of China and its increasing role in the global economy will mean for our lives, in the UK and Liverpool, in the coming century.

In the space of 30 years, China has gone from being one of the world's most enclosed, cut off countries, with extremely limited contact with the outside world, to being its third largest economy, its second largest trading nation, its largest attractor of foreign investment and the largest holder of foreign reserves.

China is the second largest user of oil after the US and uses 40% of the world's steel, copper and iron.

It is hungry for technology and it is taking stakes in western companies like BP, Rio Tinto, and Total, through its sovereign wealth funds, while Chinese companies have a stake in Barclays, IBM, Blackstone and MG Rover.

Dr Brown’s lecture, China: An Olympian Power, is at the Athenaeum Club on Wednesday, August 13, between 12.30 and 2pm. Tickets are £15 and can be booked by contacting Sarah Zhang at the Liverpool Shanghai Partnership on 0151 794 8055 or by e-mail at sarah.zhang@l-s-p.org.uk

alex.turner