The #UK's #Role in the #Emerging #World

THE #UK’S #ROLE IN THE #EMERGING #WORLD

Sir Richard Heygate

My favourite reading on the background to the emerging Asian dominance of world trade is Professor Peter Frankopan at Oxford, whose amazing book “The Silk Roads, a new history of the world” points out that the majority of world trading wealth originated in the Silk Road as it spread from China to Europe, and the same dominance is likely to re-occur. China’s exports have been growing at an astonishing rate, heavily focused on its Asian neighbours (although I note that the UK, now has an ever-increasing imbalance of trade with China).?Most recently The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement has officially entered into force from January 1st for the first grouping of countries, with others slated to follow suit.

RCEP is the world’s largest regional free trade agreement in history. It will cover 2.2 billion people or roughly a third of the world’s population, include 30% of global GDP, account for US$12.7 trillion, or over a quarter of global trade in goods and services, as well as 31% of global FDI inflows.

The US has been trying to counter this momentum rather than join it, but like other large trading countries, such as Germany, has major conflicts between it’s political stance (e.g., accusing China of human rights bias – “What about the Native Americans", they counter!) and their own leading business community. I note that Elon Musk has just total ignored US policy in this space and is building a new huge factory in Xinjiang. The US have clearly forgotten that the same stance got them shut out of Uzbekistan, an important Silk Road country.

Where does the UK stand in all this. We seem to have no clear policy between hanging on to Uncle Sam’s shirt tails, and trying to resurrect our long dead empire through pointless discussions with Canada, Australia etc. Paul Keating’s comment, which I quoted in my last post about the “UK being an old theme park, sliding into the Atlantic” is ever more realistic.

Yet we have a massive opportunity to use the entrepreneurial skills of our younger generation to secure a place in this emerging world. This talent still exists, despite a chronic lack of money. Nearly 70% of UK start-ups are now in the healthcare are, where it takes over ￡100 million to approve and launch a new treatment. I am one of the very few UK judges for the China (Shenzhen) Innovation & Entrepreneurship International Competition - U.K. Division. This year my vote went to a UK/China company that had created startling results in the whole area of genetic mutation against anti-biotics and other traditional treatments, which is the hot issue in the planet right now. They won the competition but were only asking for ￡3 million capital. I told them to add at least two noughts.

On an international spectrum, I suggested in an earlier post that the world should set up 3 ￡trillion R&D centres in the healthcare space to invest ahead of the curve, or Covid will be just the start, not the end. Precisely the opposite has happened, with countries competing for claims about the excellence of “Our Vaccine”, so that even tiny places like Cuba are forced to come up with their own solution. Why don’t we take a UK stance on this vital issue and pitch to be one of the three centres? My other two choices would be the US and China. Maybe the UK could even take a conciliatory political stance here, rather than backing the wrong horse. We used to be good at international politics a long time ago!

How to get started? Not at a political level please. Maybe by some of the UK’s best R&D innovation centres, like Oxford Science Innovation, getting together with their counterparts in China and the US. That would be really something I could spend my time on?

Sir Richard HeygateS