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British Business (China)

I start, as my colleagues did, by paying tribute to the excellent work of the IPT. Sally Muggeridge and her team did a great deal to prepare us for this visit. I also thank the firms that sponsored the visit, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Virgin and many others. My interest in the visit came from two perspectives. First, my background before becoming a politician was in engineering and science, and seeing how China has developed industrially and technologically was of great interest to me. My other area of interest, which sparked my fascination with China, is education. My first visit to Shanghai just over two years ago was to two universities that were working closely with the university of Central Lancashire in my constituency. The university of Central Lancashire has more than 1,000 students from mainland China, one of whom, I am sorry to say, sadly died last week in an accident when he was hit by a bus when on a bicycle in Preston. I send my condolences to that student's family. Many students from China are in Preston studying at UCLan. Many are spending two years in China and one year in Preston to obtain a bachelor's degree, and many are doing two plus two to obtain a master's degree in a variety of subjects. Two and a half weeks ago, I was fortunate to attend the opening of the Confucius centre at the university of Central Lancashire in Preston with the Chinese vice-consul, who came from Manchester to attend the opening. My constituency and its university have many ties, and I have many interests. When visiting China with the delegation, I was impressed to see that other educational institutions, such as Liverpool university and Nottingham, have a presence there with my university. I spoke to two young students from Liverpool university about their experience, which was reminiscent of mine 26 or 27 years ago, when I had a placement in Germany. The two students from Liverpool were studying in China and now see the world from a different perspective, in which China is becoming a major player. To draw a parallel with my experience, I trained as an engineer 27 years ago in Germany. I had learnt the language and a great deal about the history of Germany and its people at a time when the Common Market was developing into the European Community and what we have now with the Berlin wall down—a European Union of 27 member states. What we have now in China, partly through the engagement with Singapore and the Government of Lee Kwan Yew at the time, is an opening up over the past 20 years, with huge technological advancement, huge technological investment and huge educational investment. Much of the value that we export to China is education, not only from my local university, but from other universities that I have mentioned. To put into perspective what my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt) said, China has as many people studying for PhDs—not just bachelor's degrees—as we have in the population of this country. One realises why, as my hon. Friend said, in the next 80 or 90 years, China will play a role in the world that America played during the last century and Britain played during the century before that. There are great challenges ahead and great opportunities. My newly ennobled Friend Baron Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy and the Minister have a big responsibility on their shoulders to ensure that Britain can work with our European partners to create the sort of market and economy that can compete with the challenges facing us from China. There are many opportunities, and British business could benefit from working with our Chinese friends and partners. I have referred to the scale of the development at Suzhou, which is breathtaking. We are doing a little in this country to improve matters, and I had the pleasure last week of visiting Daresbury laboratory in Cheshire, which has become a science and innovation centre in the north-west. I spent six years working there as an electronics design engineer before coming into full-time politics. That institution should have had the Diamond project, but I shall not re-enact old battles. Nevertheless, it is developing leading-edge research facilities and the innovation that will drive many of the products and services that this country needs to compete with countries such as China, but that is happening on a much smaller scale than what we witnessed during our visit. We need more investment in education, and science and technology. We have the expertise, the drive and the institutions, but we obviously do not have the population to provide the number of engineers and scientists to bring about that major competition. We can achieve that only through greater co-operation and, I dare say, integration with the European Union. Apart from competition, we can work together with China. We can co-operate through business and the technological links that we are developing. We can work together culturally through education and institutions such as the Confucius institute my constituency and others throughout the country. We can work together politically through visits such as that organised by the IPT, and Government-to-Government relations, which are also important.