Mission Control, do you copy?
Previously sitting on the Board of China Britain Business Council, Jeff Cao - who led the Mayor of London’s Asia Pacific investment team witnessing growing collaboration between the UK and China - makes a powerful argument here for UK firms to lift off in China.
British originality plus Chinese creativity. I get it. So, what’s next?
For some clues, let’s take stock of what happened in the past one year and have a look at those monumental events for the UK and China. Fighting against virus aside, we both have another achievement, the hard- won freedoms.
Whilst we succeeded in the end taking back control from Brussels – in a largely orderly manner – China broke free from Earth's gravitational pull and landed a rover on Mars.
Media coverage on China, though, seemed to have turned more negative in this country over the year. One would ask, is now still good timing to execute a plan working more closely with China, especially in the innovation sphere which potentially offers the brightest prospects for collaboration?
Yes, it is.
Decoupling from China remains more rhetoric than reality. That said, are we seeing fast expanding tech collaboration between the two countries? No, we are not.
The UK is prioritising Asia in its Global Britain agenda; trade will be key to its Indo-Pacific Tilt. Trade in services drives the exchange of ideas, know-how and technology. The Integrated Review stresses that we are pursuing a ‘positive trade and investment relationship with China.’ As the only big economy to grow during the pandemic, China is expected to experience even stronger growth post-Covid.
What efforts will the UK undertake to stay ahead of the curve?
Leveraging our lead in Europe in tech and innovation to enable more British innovators to continue to capture growth opportunities in China, is a good story to tell about Global Britain.
We are one of “the most loved” countries by the Chinese. In fact, we are ranked number two, only after France. We should capitalise on the soft power we have, alongside competitive edges we enjoy in tech and innovation (over France at least), to make inroads.
Shine your Britishness!
There are of course legitimate national security concerns about working with China in certain technologies. Necessary safeguards should be applied to protect British interests. For that reason, the National Security and Investment bill has been enacted into law. Just like the UK planning system never dampened appetite for UK real estate from overseas investors, the new law won’t discourage overseas investors, including Chinese, from investing into UK tech industry.
For investors, the new law represents additional transactional cost on compliance. In fact, having been priced in when contemplating a deal the new measures offer improved transparency and predictability, and in turn will help attract more deals than before.
Then, are we welcomed by the Chinese? Have a close look at the photo (image credit: CNSA).
Even for China’s very own Mars mission, they worked with European Space Agency (ESA), Centre National d'études Spatiales (CNES) of France, Argentina's Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) and Austria’s ?sterreichische Forschungsf?rderungsgesellschaft (FFG).
Wide open arms for us are not that difficult to imagine.
So, what you really should do is to press the button to launch your (ad)venture into the orbit.
Supercharge your business growth
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