Thursday 2 June 2011

China and the Commonwealth

I was delighted to return to Beijing in May to Launch the Commonwealth Business Forum 2011 to the Chinese Market. China will be an important player in this year’s Forum given Perth’s, the host city, resource development with the country and Commonwealth’s African Members increasing relationships with Beijing. We hope the Forum can be a stepping stone to introducing Chinese companies and investment to some of the Commonwealth less well known Members.

While there I was honoured to be invited to address the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade’s annual Chinese Enterprises Outbound Investment Conference. This was the first time the Commonwealth was represented at the Conference and I was delighted to have the opportunity to introduce the 1000 plus delegates to the opportunities available in the association.

Ensuring the Commonwealth’s myriad opportunities are well recognised in China is essential given the scale of the countries overseas investment, in 2009 Chinese Companies invested US$56.3 billion dollars abroad; this was 3125 investments to overseas companies, in 129 countries. As China continues its ‘Going Global’ policy it is essential that the Commonwealth gets its share of this increasingly large pie.