CGTN Europe interviewed Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Chair of the China-Britain Business Council.
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00:00Sir Sherrod Cooper-Coles is the chair of the China-Britain Business Council and he's been
00:05attending the forum.
00:07The main sense is a feeling that we've all got to stick together. We've got economic
00:14challenges in most of our countries. We all want growth. But we've also got geopolitical
00:22headwinds and, if I'm honest, the elephant in the room over the past two days has been
00:29elsewhere. You can imagine where. And we've all been talking about the way we need to preserve
00:36globalization. We need to preserve the drive towards net zero. We need to preserve
00:43collaboration on innovation. We need to keep global trade flowing. So, honestly, it's been
00:51a very important meeting at a very important time.
00:55And although there are slightly fewer Americans than in previous years,
01:00there are still plenty of Americans here. And, you know, I salute those who've attended.
01:07And you mentioned that there are American CEOs as well as British ones there,
01:11more than 80 multinational chief executives attending the forum.
01:16What do you think that says about the level of confidence in China?
01:20Well, I think it says that China matters. It matters in terms of size. You know, a market
01:27of 800 million middle-class consumers, the producer of 80% of the world's steel, etc., etc.
01:37I could reel out the numbers. But it also, I think, is an important sort of geopolitical signal
01:45that most of the world understands and believes that if you want to prosper in today's world,
01:52you need to engage with China. And you need a sort of grown-up, confident approach in which,
01:57of course, you don't always agree about everything. But you do work together to
02:03maximize the areas of mutual advantage. When it comes to the specifics, Beijing
02:08once again pledging to improve the business environment and remove investment restrictions
02:14for foreign businesses. Are those really being put in place? Are there tangible improvements
02:19for foreign businesses? Or are there still concerns about that?
02:23Well, the answer is, honestly, Paul, both. There are real improvements for foreign investors,
02:30for foreigners seeking to do business in China. But as always, there's more to be done.
02:36I mean, what struck me and I said to a colleague in the British delegation was the
02:42sort of messages from Premier Li Cheng about attracting foreign investment. Very similar to
02:50the sorts of messages we expect the British Chancellor of the Exchequer to be delivering
02:56when she gets up in the House of Commons on Wednesday. And that, in a way, shows the alignment
03:03now between the new British government and China that we both want growth. We want to work together.
03:12We have complementary economies. Britain specializes in financial and professional
03:18services, in pharmaceuticals, in luxury goods, in all sorts of niche products. And China
03:27does the range, but it also has the technologies of the future.
03:31US tariffs, Chinese tariffs, an escalating trade war. How can the businesses that you represent,
03:37that you work with, British businesses more broadly, position themselves and mitigate
03:42an escalating trade war between China and the United States?
03:46It was top of the agenda for everyone, but it wasn't the sort of thing people wanted to talk
03:51about in public sessions. But it was the sort of thing everyone wanted to talk about in the margins
03:59of something like the China Development Forum. And that's the value of a meeting like this with
04:04CEOs from around the world, with academics and others. And we were able to compare notes.
04:11Nobody wanted to advertise in front of everyone, let alone in front of the Americans, you know,
04:19what they might do to mitigate the damage. But everyone was clear that tariffs on this sort of
04:25scale are damaging. And they're not only damaging to the countries that are targeted. In the end,
04:32the view, particularly among many in the American or all in the American delegation,
04:38was that they're damaging to America.