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British Business (China)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Olner) on securing the debate and the hon. Member for Wirral, South (Ben Chapman) on his joint leadership of the delegation, of which I was a part. I thank the Industry and Parliament Trust and the many British companies including Virgin, PricewaterhouseCoopers, BP, GKN, Arup and others who helped to make the trip so informative and such a success. I should like to echo many of the themes discussed by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen). My motivation for going on the trip was that I had never been to China before. I am a reasonably well-travelled person and felt ignorant that I did not have any first-hand experience of a country that is becoming increasingly important both across the world and for Britain. I was interested in what the development of China meant for the British economy and people, and I was blown away by what I saw. My experience was so serious and dramatic that it had a profound impact on me and has influenced my thinking about politics and the future of the world. I went with everyone else to Shanghai and one evening we were having a nice dinner in a building that was about five or six storeys high and was originally a British mercantile building. We were on the top floor of a restaurant overlooking the river and during the meal, I sat next to a British person who had been living in Shanghai for many years. He asked me what I thought of the view. It was night and the view was lit up, so that there was an Asian version of a Manhattan skyline on the other side of the river. It was an impressive backdrop and I told the person I was sat next to that I thought the view was fantastic and he said that 11, 12 or 13 years ago the area was all fields. That demonstrates the pace of change. The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk) made the point that China has 1.3 billion people. There is an east-west divide, rather than a north-south divide, and on the eastern side—for the ease of mathematical breakdown—there are perhaps 300 million people who are part of the new economy. Within that area, perhaps 50 million to 70 million people—roughly the population of Britain—are consumers in the western sense. That shows China's potential. The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt) made the point that there is a reserve pool of labour of about 1 billion people. We, in this country, think of China as a great exporter; indeed, it is a great exporter, and that is an important part of the world economy. However, the domestic market in China will lead to huge changes for British business and is a big opportunity. It does not take a huge leap of imagination to realise that as more and more Chinese people increase their wealth and prosperity and become consumers themselves, the Chinese economy will be fuelled by the need to satisfy domestic consumption, not just international consumption. Other contributors to this debate have mentioned the increasing quality of the Chinese work force. Too often in this country we think that all the Chinese do is make cheap clothes for western consumers to buy, and that that keeps down our headline rate of inflation. China does that extremely well, but Shanghai has about 400,000 university students. As the hon. Member for Nottingham, North said, we went to Shuzhou and looked around a university that was a joint enterprise with the university of Liverpool. We commented on what a successful university had been put together. There were 10 universities on one street and the students there were studying engineering, information technology and science. They were motivated and focused on what their studies meant for their country economically and their own life prospects. China will overtake the United States. I agree with the point made about the 19th century being the British century and the 20th century being the American century. American still has a huge role to play in the world—not just economically, but militarily, culturally, politically and in other ways—but China is growing and growing in influence and I entirely endorse what has been said about how the British Government must respond to that. I welcome the new Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. It is important to have a politician of his stature and international reach in that role and I hope that he can bring his influence and political skills to bear to the advantage of our country.