 Mae'r ffordd, Paul Webley. I'm the director of SIRS. Welcome to SIRS. It's a real pleasure to see so many of you here this evening for the formal launch of the SIRS China Institute and our new lecture series, the first being tonight's panel discussion entitled China the Landscape. This SIRS China Institute Lecture Theodas will present original valuable spectres on China that will cut across business, media, government and academia. Now, SIRS has a long history of studying China, and through the SIRS China Institute our aim is to frankly to reclaim our world leading position as a preeminent international centre for the study of China. And SIRS is already known as the place to go to for those who really want to understand China outside of the traditional world-worn ruts. Where do the China students of UCL, Kings, LSE and others come for their Chinese language training and to use the extensive Chinese library resources ? Soas You'll forgive this sort of aggressive marketing speak here. Where is the home of the China courtly which is the leading source for the serious scholarship of contemporary China and Taiwan one of the most cited area studies journals in the world? Soas Where can you find nearly 50, I'm hoping Michelle that soon I'm not going to say nearly 50, but 50 but nearly 50 China experts all working together with expertise on subjects as diverse as Chinese film Chinese archaeology, Chinese economics Chinese music, international management practices in China, you name it, we do it and you know what the answer is because I've already given you the answer twice, the answer is Soas. As you may know SIRS is approaching a major landmark in 2016, our centenary year and we're approaching this year with clear purpose, renewed vigor and deep belief in our mission to build our expertise and our responsibility to share our institution's knowledge. The confidence that SIRS has is buoyed by recent generous donations so some of you will see in that last autumn we received a £20 million donation from the Alfred Wood Foundation for Southeast Asian Arts and it's donations like that one that highlight the high impact international cross sector partnerships that we're developing and if I look across the room and the people I was talking to earlier our panel tonight I see individuals from government, from arts organisations from media, NGOs, business, academia indeed from just about everywhere and at SIRS we know that the academic voice is important but we also know that this is not the lone voice as expertise in today's world only by working together with other academic institutions with NGOs and the media can we impact on important global conversations and that's my hope for the China Institute that this will project SIRS and our expertise into the world but will also make a real contribution to those important conversations that are going on. Now I know that we'll produce world class graduates through our new two year advanced masters in Chinese studies I also know that we'll publish world changing research in our diverse and interdisciplinary areas we do that already but to make a real difference we need to build these world changing partnerships that will help the world to truly understand China in all its complexity and support China to walk a path that benefits the whole of mankind and SIRS has a key role to play here we have the different perspectives and a real knowledge that is grounded in decades of first hand China experience we have very clear ideas but we also want to develop partnerships across the sectors to discover new ways forward we look forward to having those conversations with all of you in the forthcoming months and I just want to now introduce the founding director of SIRS China Institute and the most recent of a very long line of distinguished professors of Chinese at SIRS Michelle Hox at the end there Michelle is of course as many of us know a brilliant scholar she's carried out ground baking research and contemporary Chinese internet culture his book which I strongly recommend on this is coming out this year that's a bit of advertising again on modern Chinese poetry on the sociology of modern Chinese literature he's also a brilliant organiser and a brilliant leader that's why his colleagues elected him the president of the British Association for Chinese Studies and his interests in China are broad and deep and he's passionate about sharing his insights with the world that's why I'm so confident that Michelle is the best person to lead the SIRS China Institute and that's enough about Michelle I think but Michelle he'll be asking for a rise next over to you Michelle and that's what he calls aggressive director Webley minister councillor Shen on my guests, esteemed colleagues dear students welcome to the official launch of the SOAS China Institute today the largest community of scholars of China in Europe joins the global conversation with and about China we are confident we can make significant contributions based on our unique assets coverage of an unrivaled spectrum of specialisms ranging across the humanities and social sciences from the earliest times to the present and grounded as is the SOAS tradition in a thorough knowledge of language封 laf sian ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau ddechrau I'm glad I got that bit out of the way. Now I can take it, but that was language. Research, the eight research areas we will develop and that are described in the folders and leaflets that you will find all around here are all thoroughly interdisciplinary. When it comes to research, we believe that complex questions deserve complex answers and that these answers require collaborative cross-sector partnerships. The big questions facing China are global questions. At SOAS we have some of the answers and we know we can find some of the other answers with support and with partners. SOAS is renowned for taking a critical view of the world and looking outside of the traditional ruts that the China conversations inevitably find themselves in elsewhere whether focused on corruptions, ideological oppositions, or economic development versus human rights nexus. Through the SOAS China Institute, nearly 50 soon to be 50, academic experts are committed to distilling these answers and to transmitting them beyond our university walls, either independently or with the help of partners within or interested in the greater China region. Our new postgraduate teaching programmes include our brand new two-year advanced masters in Chinese studies and are built on this same vision to train a cadre of highly skilled individuals whose knowledge of China reaches beyond single disciplines and who are confident of working to the highest standards in a bilingual environment. This is what the best employers want from their future staff, globally minded critical thinkers. In addition, we look forward to providing a suite of shorter courses, including our 2014 summer school, as well as bespoke training options. But we are not just a teaching institution, SOAS is also a learning institution. We are profoundly aware of the fact that in today's world, expertise on China is by no means the sole property of academics. And I mean that. China experts are in the worlds of business, government, media, NGOs and so on. As I said at the beginning, we are here to join the conversation and we hope to provide a platform where boundaries can be crossed and bridges can be built. And on that platform today, at this inaugural event in the SOAS China Institute lecture series, are four eminent individuals whose professional expertise epitomises the range of knowledge and experience on China that I described just now. It is my distinct honour to introduce them to you. Rosemary Foote is Professor of International Relations at Oxford. She is also a SOAS alumna and we welcome her back into our midst. Within the academic world, Rosemary has been a pioneering bridge builder. Her latest book called China Across the Divide aims to bring together debates about China's domestic policy and society as well as its role in international politics. Stephen Lilley is Director for Asia Pacific at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is a Mandarin speaker who has worked as a diplomat in Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. His experiences in New Delhi and as the UK ambassador to the Philippines have given him an Asian wide perspective on China. Simon Roby is one of this country's leading investment bankers. In his very impressive career, he has held a wide range of senior management positions dealing with China in many of them. Most recently, he has become Chairman of Atlas Capital Group, which specialises in the Chinese market. Simon's expertise crosses over into the realm of culture where he holds a number of positions, including Chairman of the Royal Opera House. Wen Guang Shao is Managing Director of the European operation of the Phoenix Media Network, the largest worldwide Chinese language news and entertainment provider. Educated in China, the USA and the UK and having worked as a diplomat at the UN as well as as a university lecturer and now being active in the media, he epitomises the kind of crossing of boundaries that we are trying to bring about here. Through his position at Phoenix, he has a unique vantage point on the often heated exchanges about representation of China in the media. For this first public SCI lecture event, you might call it our calling card, each speaker has been asked to talk for ten minutes about the landscape they are confronted with in their personal and professional interactions with China. And for those of you who are worried about tubes, we will stick to that time of ten minutes per speaker. After the presentations, we will also make some time for discussion, including questions that have been sent in through our website. Before we start, a word of thanks to the Lee Foundation of Singapore, especially Dr. Seng Ti Lee, for providing us with a start-up donation that has helped us on our way to SOAS for believing in the future of Chinese studies and entrusting their resources to me as the founding director of the SOAS China Institute. To my colleagues working in Chinese studies across all of our departments and disciplines for their support, their enthusiasm and their commitment to achieving our vision. And to all of you for being here tonight in such great numbers, making it also very worthwhile. Thank you very much. Now I should like to invite Rosemary Foote to start. Thank you very much, Michelle. It is a great pleasure to be back here at SOAS. As Michelle said, I'm a SOAS alumna. I took an MA here in area studies so long ago that it was actually called MA Area Studies Far East. We wouldn't call it that now. And one of the fond memories I have is that I wrote an MA thesis on sinusobit relations. And although he probably won't remember it, John Gitting's actually provided useful supervision at a crucial moment when I was developing that thesis topic. So it's a great pleasure to be back here and to see John in the audience. I want to think about the issue of landscape in two particular ways. First in a very literal sense and to think about landscape in geographical, geopolitical terms. And then to think about landscape and its relationship to the world of ideas and the world of scholarship. And I hope in those ways to make connections with my fellow panellists here. Now when I first began the study of China and its international relations, it really wasn't that. It was about Chinese foreign policy. It was a study of Maoist China. We focused on the country as a rather weak country. We thought about it as a land power. We thought about it as a country contained by the strongest state in the international system. That is the United States contained strategically, economically, politically. And we wrote about a focus on China's relations with the dominant superpowers of the day, the former Soviet Union and the United States. I wrote about the fact of China not really having a fully developed policy towards its neighbours in the Asia Pacific. It tended to think about its relations with its neighbours through this lens of Sino-Soviet relations. So a particular geographical take on the world, which was unusual in many ways. The big strategic changes came in the 1970s, of course, when China entered the United Nations and then, of course, with the rapprochement with the US. And so you get a changing dynamic between China and its own region in the sense that instead of the Asia Pacific region being seen as a hostile American lake, for a period at least it was seen as an arena which could provide China with a degree of protection, again protection against its northern border and against the former Soviet Union. And perhaps it was also seen as a way, the US relationship with Japan in particular, was seen as a way of putting constraints on what has been a long term concern in China about the potential rise of Japanese militarism. So a very different relationship with the United States in that period. Perhaps though the most dynamic and most momentous decisions are the ones associated with the reform and opening in the late 1970s. And this is the era when we begin to think about China's economic and political resurgence and we begin to think about China as becoming a major global actor in world politics. Now that resurgence has been fuelled by an export led strategy which has changed China's geographical understanding of itself in the sense that the sea routes, the sea borders have become much more significant to it. So once we thought of it predominantly as a land power concerned about its internal border regions, now we think about it as a sea going power desiring to protect those sea routes that provide the avenues for its goods to travel abroad, but also to receive the resources that are so necessary for powering its economy. China's resurgence has also led it to have more of the attributes of a great power, a global power with interest in all major continents of the world. And so its neighbours now experience it in a very different way. They think of it as a country to be socialised or to be constrained. They recognise it as a very important source of their continuing prosperity and they realise that it has the capacity to shape their futures for good or for ill. And so if we study China now, we know that we have to have a far greater geographical reach. And a central question has emerged out of this, especially in the West, and that is the question of what does China want in terms of global politics? Is it setting out to reform the global system to overturn it or is it something in between of that? And when Chinese elites think about their futures, they think about, for example, 2021 and the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, they think about 2049, the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Where do they want China to be at that moment? Do they still see themselves as a middle-income country? Do they see themselves as the hegemonic power in the Asia-Pacific region? Or do they see themselves as a deeply interconnected country in a globalised system? And this leads me into my second perspective. And this is a tall alternative way of thinking about China and landscape. So we're now fascinated with China as this powerful actor in the system that whether it likes it or not has major intended and unintended consequences. Its global imprint is huge. It's in then, it's in a sort of mutually constitutive relationship with the global society. And instead of thinking about China's relations with other states, we now think about China's inter-societal relationships. And that means that this panel represents in so many ways those inter-societal relationships. Relationships with cultural bodies, with educational bodies, with the business sector, with the financial sector and so on. So we think about China not just through this lens of relations with major states, but also in terms of really important non-state civil society sectors. Two changes, I think, have occurred as a result of this move in the mode of studying China. And that is extraordinarily difficult to become a specialist on contemporary China, on China and the world. And this is partly the consequence of the numbers of issues that have arisen that are requiring collective action, whether that's climate change or nuclear non-proliferation and the like. And it's also the fact of China's presence, as I said earlier, in all major continents of the world. So it's not sufficient to know something about China and the US or China and climate change. We need various interactions so that we actually generalise across a whole range of topic areas. We need to be able to recognise that we're perhaps focusing, specialising in a part of a very complex whole. And therefore, again, the interconnections that the SoA's China Institute is trying to establish and develop are so very important so that we don't get fixated on our own particular specialist study with respect to China, but begin to understand how we can generalise across various forms of behaviour. Another significant outcome in this changing world of which China is such an important part is that the country has become a subject of study not just for the China specialist, but for those in disciplines where China becomes a case study in many ways. So, for example, in my own field, international relations, IR theorists, perhaps a realist among them, would be focused on what does it mean for global order, what does it mean for peace and war of the fact that China has increased in power relative to the United States. How does that change the system which we are a part? Or if, for example, you are interested in the more sociological approaches to international relations, if you think of China as an unusual entity in global politics in that it has an identity at both a developing country as well as a great power identity, how does that influence the way we've thought about identity politics as a subject of study within the field of international relations? One could expand this if you're interested in the global energy market, if you're interested in the art market and culture more broadly, if you're interested in the environment, then again, China becomes a very important case study for you to focus on. So, in order to deal with this greater complexity, the SOAS China Institute, as you can see, is developing a number of different research areas that require interdisciplinary expertise, and I congratulate them for that. And I would say that this is important for three main reasons, and I'll end on this point. It overcomes this danger that I spoke of earlier of specialising in simply one slice of China's international relations, and it allows us to generalise away from our specialist focus when we need to be able to do that. Secondly, it avoids the pitfalls associated with the perception of China as a unique actor in world politics, because I think we sometimes can get carried away for, in some sense, understandable reasons. And thirdly, the SOAS China Institute promises to deepen our understanding of this complex entity that we call China, but which is clearly not a singular phenomenon. So, thank you very much. I pass to my colleagues. Thank you very much indeed, and I think you've added a very significant question to the questions that are being raised here. What does China want, and also what do we want from China, and how does that relationship develop? And I think Stephen might well be the perfect person to talk more about that. And do you feel happy to comment on things said by other speakers in your presentation? Thank you. I mean, certainly many of the questions that Rosemary has raised are exactly the sort of questions that we're thinking about in the Foreign Office, and I'll come back to that. Let me begin first of all by congratulating SOAS on the launch of the SOAS China Institute. It is a very special occasion. It has a particular resonance for me. It's 25 years ago since I came to SOAS to do foreign office language training as a young diplomat. I'm never quite sure whether SOAS considers foreign office language trainees to be alumni. But anyway, I shan't embarrass my teachers seeing my former teacher, Professor Hugh Baker, in the audience. I shan't emulate your feet of beginning in Chinese, Michel. But I do think this is a very important occasion, and the idea of building up a centre of real, deep and multi-disciplinary expertise in China in London is something that is really important, and something that in the Foreign Office we really value. No country is going to have a bigger impact on our lives in the 21st century than China, and it's critical, therefore, that we have a deep and wide understanding of those impacts. As a policymaker, looking back over the past 25 years, since we're talking about landscapes, what strikes me in a way is how much the Chinese landscape has broadened out for us as policymakers and how the landscape of UK-China relations has broadened out in scope, in depth and in complexity. I first went to China as a diplomat in 1992, and at that time the UK-China landscape was framed overwhelmingly, not exclusively, but overwhelmingly by Hong Kong and by the ongoing negotiations between Britain and China at that time over the future of Hong Kong, and so much of what we did was seen through that prism. I was not personally dealing with Hong Kong most of the time, I was there in the days when we had 75% of one person focusing on the Chinese economy, because that was about as much as it required. So that was me. I arrived in China on the week of Deng Xiaoping's southern tour, and the period that followed that I still think is one of the most exciting and significant periods in China's economic history and the process of its reforms. But even then we had a tendency, I think, to see the Chinese economy as something a bit like Chinese politics and Chinese literature and Chinese history. It was something rather special, and it was something, the point that Rosemary made, it was something that was very much for China specialists, and that most of the time, as long as we reported it back to the foreign office, most of British government really didn't worry too much about what was going on in China in the economy and in politics. And the contrast today could not be greater. Today our relations operate on a broad canvas that reflects the huge developments that have taken place in China, and that reflect China's, what is now China's central role in world affairs in the economy, but also in global politics. Now we have, to illustrate that, we have a well-developed architecture now in UK-China relations. This has sometimes been obscured sometimes by political differences, but the reality is that we have annual summits between the British Prime Minister and the Chinese Premier. We have three cabinet level dialogues between Britain and China and a host of other official level dialogues and exchanges, including an annual joint economic and trade commission. It is worth highlighting some of the content of these exchanges to illustrate the breadth of our relationship. So last October we had our annual economic and financial dialogue, which is led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, together with Chinese Vice-Premier, Mark Ai. That took place in Beijing. At the centre of that was our ongoing collaboration in the financial services sector, and particularly the internationalisation of the Renminbi and the development of London as an international trading centre for the Renminbi. And 25 years ago who would have thought that we would be talking about the Renminbi as an international currency. During that dialogue we also opened the door to Chinese investment in the British civil nuclear programme. We announced millions of pounds of Chinese inward investment into the UK, including an expansion in Huawei's R&D operations in the UK. Now again, 25 years ago who would have thought of Chinese investment in the UK, still less Chinese investment in high technology by what is more or less a private company. So a great deal has changed. In February we had our strategic dialogue between the Foreign Secretary William Hague and State Chancellor Yang Jiechi. That took place in London. That of course followed the Prime Minister's big business delegation to Beijing in December. But at the strategic dialogue we discussed a whole range of issues of the day, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, North Korea. We discussed big global challenges, climate change, counterproliferation, the development of cyberspace. Well 25 years ago of course there wasn't really any cyberspace to talk about, but also 25 years ago the idea that we would be engaging with China to discuss the solutions to global problems was still a very undeveloped idea. And then last week we held in China our people-to-people dialogue as we call it. Ministers are people so it is a people-to-people dialogue in that sense. It's led by the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and by Vice-Premier Liu Yan Dong. It includes on our side the University's Minister, David Willits, the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Ed Waze. And they went to China to talk about a whole range of issues around innovation, education, healthcare. So Jeremy Hunt was talking about how to help China build its healthcare system, about the opportunities for the NHS and for British healthcare companies to be part of that. We talked about the really big health challenges of the 21st century facing the whole globe, the challenge of dementia, of antimicrobial resistance. During the same visit we signed a UK-China film co-production treaty. We signed an agreement between the UK National Theatre and the National Theatre of China to produce a Chinese version of Warhorse in 2015. And we signed an agreement for the Department of Education. I find this slightly scary myself but I'm on maths teaching exchanges to improve the quality of maths teaching in UK schools. So this is a varied and it's quite an eclectic set of examples. But I give them because I think they illustrate that 21st century engagement with China is as Rosemary said, it's truly multidisciplinary. And it also reflects the fact that there are a few issues if any in the world that don't have a Chinese dimension. And therefore if we don't understand the Chinese dimension, the Chinese perspective and the Chinese interest in these matters, then our understanding of them will be incomplete and that makes it all the more important to have centres of interdisciplinary expertise on China to look at this full range of issues. Now when I was first thinking about what I would say tonight and to talk about the landscape I thought I had better check the dictionary definition. And the Oxford dictionary definition is of landscape is all the visible features of an area of land. I suppose for a foreign policy maker in particular it's not just the visible features. It's in a sense the invisible features or at least the unknown or the uncertain things that preoccupies in particular. And the fact is that with China there are still a lot of unknowns or uncertainties. But these are issues that matter for policy makers and they matter for Britain and they matter for Europe. And Rosemary raised some of those questions which overlap with the ones that I would offer now, which is indeed what kind of role will China exercise in the rules-based international system politically, but in particular for trade and investment. How will China exercise its growing military capability, particularly how will it exercise that within its own region? How will China address the expectations of its population with regards to human rights and fundamental freedoms? What role will it play in shaping international norms for the development and use of cyberspace? And to say nothing about how China will tackle not only global issues but its own domestic issues. The issues that are the subject of media debate in China about inequality, about the rural, urban divide, about food safety, about water safety, water scarcity, resource scarcity, air quality. These are issues that preoccupy above all China but they preoccupy us, they should preoccupy us because the solutions to these will determine China's success in terms of economic and social development. And let's be clear from the perspective of the British government we want to see China's success in these areas. Fundamentally they will determine really whether not just China's success but then the success of Asia and therefore the future of what many call the Asian century. Now I come back to SOAS to conclude. I've said it's important that we have a centre of real China expertise in the UK. I think it is very important that that expertise doesn't remain only in SOAS that it comes out as you're wanting to do to share with wider society. Because if Britain is to fully unlock the opportunities of China and the rise of China and if we're to respond to the challenges which go with that, then we need to have a much wider understanding, not just in our universities but across government, across business, across media, in education and in society as a whole. And we need a much more vibrant debate between these sectors which is exactly what we're trying to do here tonight. The former Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, she spoke of making Australia more Asia-literate and more Asia-capable. And I also think we need Britain to be more Asia-literate and more Asia-capable. And at the heart of that we need Britain to be more China-literate and more China-capable. And if there is one thing that SCI can really do, it is helping us achieve that. Thank you. My heartfelt thanks go to our distinguished alumnus. If any other members of the panel have SOAS connections that I'm unaware of, please feel free to share them. If not, then let's move on. Simon Ruby. I am not an alumni of SOAS. My most distinguished foreign language achievement was passing my French O-level on the fifth attempt. I do, though in all seriousness, join my fellow panellists in congratulating you for this evening and for the work you're going to do. I think it is profoundly important. And I'm going to try in a few minutes to bring to life for you why wearing the various hats I wear is profoundly important. I wear a number of hats and the most obviously relevant is my new chairmanship of Atlas Capital. But I also had a long career at Morgan Stanley where I ran our global M&A franchise and ran our firm in the UK. And I now have my own advisory firm which I'm pleased to say has some very large clients, each of whom inevitably have important interests in China. I won't name them all but you'll get a sense of it when I say they include Rio Tinto, BP, RBS, Vodafone and so on. I'm also chairman of the Royal Opera House and I'm always really pleased to be badged primarily as chairman of the Royal Opera House as opposed to an investment banker. And I think I'm right in saying that the Royal Opera House was really at the vanguard of structuring concrete relationships with Chinese cultural institutions. We took the Royal Ballet to Beijing prior to the Beijing Olympics, which was a very wonderful experience for all of us, but was the beginnings of a real partnership with the National Centre for Performing Arts in Beijing with exchange of backstage staff in particular so that we could transfer skills. So China surrounds me and is relevant to every day of my life. Here's a today example of that. I am advising AstraZeneca who today as you, those of you who follow these things will have seen have got embroiled in a situation with Pfizer who are seeing whether they can put an offer to buy AstraZeneca on the table. We got wind of this initiative only on Saturday, this iteration of the initiative anyway, only on Saturday. So it's been a busy couple of days and a very busy day today. And you could imagine that on the first day of the publicity of something as significant as $100 billion potential bid, possibly much higher than $100 billion potential bid for one of our most important British companies, so there would be a host of issues that would preoccupy somebody like me who's their keyboard adviser on a daylight today. But we got to China during today, so when we finished worrying about what to say to the UK government, what to say to the Swedish government, what to say to the US government, what to say to our shareholders, what to say to our board, what to say to our employees, China featured in a potential transaction between a very large US pharmaceutical company. And a very large UK pharmaceutical company, why? Because it so happens that they are the first and second biggest foreign pharmaceutical companies in China. And Moffcom will have a point of view about the transaction. If this was happening five years ago, we would not have got to the Chinese regulatory issues possibly at all, and certainly not in the first several days of the slightly hectic evaluation of all the various issues. But the Moffcom reaction to the potential combination of these two major companies featured in the very first day of consideration of this potential but highly tentative idea. An extraordinary change in my working life, and of course one which means that somebody like me trying to help companies practically navigate their way through complicated situations, must understand this extraordinary place much better than I do, principally the motivation why I've decided to invest more of my time in China by taking over the chairmanship of Atlas Capital. Again, I'm looking at the clock. I thought that what I could most usefully try to explain to you was some of the issues that tend to dog discussions in this country about possible investment from China into this country. And I think that conversation ought to be easier in this country than any other country in the world probably given the very public openness that the current government has been careful to espouse, and as you've heard Stephen describe, and all of us who work in business in London understand that this government is committed to having a very open and permissive relationship with China economically and in terms of its relationships with our key companies. And there are obvious reasons why major companies, domiciled in the UK would want to have very important relationships with Chinese entities, access to the Chinese market obviously, access to extraordinary amounts of potential investment obviously. Less obviously, but really importantly, as the world changes, the extraordinary influence that China exerts in the markets and countries where it is particularly important is a very interesting asset for British companies to think about harnessing as they go about their business. How much more helpful is it to have a Chinese friend in Mongolia than to have, with all due respect to you Stephen, the British government worrying about what you're doing in Mongolia? That's probably the end of my British passport. So lots of reasons why it should be an absolute no-brainer to look to China first for your non-British and perhaps non-conventionally Western source of investment. And there are really interesting examples of prominent Chinese investment and important UK public and non-public companies. The one that startled me the most when it happened and I've got the most familiar with is the investment into Rio Tinto which happened, as I'm sure you all know, during the hostile bid by BHP for Rio Tinto several years ago where I was deeply involved. So what are the problems? What are the issues? What preoccupies sensible groups of UK directors as they're thinking about this? I think in no particular order there is a sense of opaqueness about how decisions get made in China about the connections between different state-owned entities, those state-owned entities and private entities, all of that and the government. How does it really work? How do decisions get taken? How do the various stakeholders in China coordinate, not coordinate, seek to intervene in a particular decision-making process? Very poor understanding about that. There is a worry candidly about confidentiality about when you introduce a Chinese element into something, do you struggle to keep your secret secret? And I think that sits in the back of lots of people's minds. There is a really important question about corporate governance. Does a Anglo-Saxon corporate governance model sit comfortably with non-Anglo-Saxon corporate governance models? How would it feel to have Chinese directors sitting around a board table in a London boardroom? How would that cramp discussion, how would that informed discussion, how would it actually work practically? Language, culture, different starting points and discussions, might there be a risk that you'd have one board discussion with Chinese directors in the room and the real board discussion in a different place? That kind of dysfunctional governance stuff, people are rather allergic to. How would it feel if you were the partners of a much, with a much, much more powerful company than you are yourself? I had a wonderful colleague who used to say, when you dance with a gorilla, the gorilla decides when to stop. And there is a sense that if you're a very large UK company but your Chinese counterpart is ten times larger, how do you keep some sense of control over the dynamic in a partnership? Fundamentally, how would it feel to have an open partnership with a very important, very large but perhaps rather less well-known Chinese entity? There's also a big worry that people have which is about how the owners of businesses in the UK would react to the introduction of a very important partnership with a Chinese entity. And we've seen some mixed reactions over the years from deeply allergic where there's a sense that a particular investment might skew a strategy in a way that might not be, quote, shareholder friendly in the UK to rather welcoming in other situations. Given that there are such fundamentally good reasons for these partnerships to exist, our job, our job, this extraordinary initiative's job, is to try to get a much more subtle understanding of what we're dealing with here so that some of the rather crude, rather monolithic assumptions about what it would be like to deal with Chinese entities and Chinese individuals are broken down. Some of the burden, I'm sure, lies in China for this, but a great deal of the burden lies in having a much more subtle understanding about what having partnerships with companies in this extraordinary important part of the world will really mean. So that is my hope for this, that we can get to a level of understanding which is much more subtle than, of course, subtlety brings open-mindedness. Thank you very much indeed. I think we're getting wonderful insights into some very practical concerns that are present in these different sectors that are to do with China and the way the world is changing as a consequence of what's happening in China. So I think having them juxtaposed is really, you know, for me, and I hope for all of you, a wonderful experience. So we follow up now with our final speaker, Dr Schell. Thank you very much. I also wish to join other speakers and members of the panel in congratulating SOAS for the launch of the China Institute and also for the honour for me to speak here. I dare say I don't have any formal connection with SOAS in my past, but when I did my Diffiel at Oxford about 30 years ago, I used to come here to, you know, dig deep into the library and I found SOAS a very good holding of old papers of British commercial houses. Back in the 19th century and first part of the 20th century in China and Shanghai and so on. So I used to spend time looking through the SOAS papers and that sort of thing. And I did my SOAS for the tremendous resources and that's why I come here today not without trepidation and nor do I really think that I can say something that you don't know because you've been specialised in China studies. And among the panel members, I'm probably the only person from inside China looking at China rather than observing the landscapes and phenomenon policy and the second guessing what's going on in the minds of the Chinese leaders from outside. So if I guess a lot of Chinese sitting in the audience may laugh at me if the Chinese don't even know what's going on in China. So that's all the more reason for us to admire SOAS for launching the Chinese Institute and trying to really get grips with what's going on in China. What I'd like to share with you my personal observations about the media landscape in China, one small aspect of what's going on in the past 30 years in China. As I represent a phoenix television group, a Hong Kong company broadcasting into mainland China and in the process of doing that having a lot of interaction with the regulatory bodies, with fellow TV and media organisations in China. Personally I have observed what's going on and all the changes happening in China in the media sector. But first of all a few words about phoenix television. I'd like to single out a number of differences in our way of doing things that may have made a difference in China's media landscape in the past 18 years as we launched the first flagship channel, the phoenix Chinese channel in 1996. That probably was something very new and it gave birth to the dawn of a new era in TV news reporting in China. A lot of people were very surprised to see something so radically different from what they were very familiar and very comfortable with official television media like CCTV. One is our news reporting is combined with live stand-in and studio commentaries. So quite a lot of layers of reporting on the same news and same event to give people interpretation and insights etc. We have programmes named after the presenters and leading commentators like all these people, Tiger, and in the process of doing that we have learned from Larry King live from Charlie Rose show or from say Barbara Waters in America. People are very familiar with the household names but people in China hardly could remember the names of the TV presenters in official television broadcast because their identity was not that important as to the main role of the party's policy announcements and mouthpiece. The second feature is that we have introduced live TV debates on current affairs and topical social issues with guest speakers live arguing over controversial issues. And official TV programmes one could notice the difference immediately because they didn't do debates for obvious reasons. And Phoenix also is known for its new perspectives in China's modern history and the world events and we push the envelope with regard to controversial historical figures and introduce new insights and new theories and new assumptions about historical events and Chinese traditions and cultural legacy. So it's a huge challenge to the accepted narrative and conventional wisdom and that really opened the eyes to people. And then in a break from the political tradition we focus on ordinary people and people at the lower echelons of the society at the obscure corners of the society very much away from the usual role models of the government. And then we tell what's going on every day life of the real people in the real situation. That's also something quite different in usual Chinese media reporting. Now we are very bold in discussing human values and religious beliefs and bottom line issues including social injustice and sexual discrimination, family violence, child abuse, environmental degradation etc. So in a way we are very bold and careful in stepping in the official line but on the other hand we keep telling ourselves not to be obsessed with negativity in the western media but to embrace hope and sunshine and basic human decency. So we tell ourselves to be fair and balanced in our reporting. Now it is clear much has changed in China's media landscape. The landscape reporters are changing from official note takers to critical watchdogs of public policies and social justice. Governmental bodies are developing a sense of media management thanks to all the training and regular improvement and then public accountability with spokesmen at various levels of government ready to answer all the queries from the public. That's quite new. There is also an apparent relaxation of control over negative news as well as undefined official secrets. Also there has been the explosion of media activities in China. One can not help noticing whenever one is in China. So much digitalisation of TV networks and the huge increases of users of social media. Therefore you see a much broadened landscape of media in China with not one voice but with the cacophony of various voices in the society. But then in an increasingly open market economy that's something that one expects to see happen because media are no longer exclusively at the back-and-call of the government but essentially also a very important key sector for growth. So there is still a bit of control in the regulation but then the recognition that media must also be allowed to operate according to the market and the commercial rules and make money as a business. So even though government may be in a position to hold these media organisations a barrel and shut down the system overnight but there is no incentive for them to do that just as there is no incentive for the government to end Chinese consumerism. Now what are the challenges ahead? In China the government expects the media to report on official daily routines and to promote stability and support the leadership. So by instinct and there is nothing nasty or nothing sinister about it, officials tend to want broadcasters and publications to tell good stories about China. I noticed that part of your remit is to study China's image and the imagination of itself and how the rest of the world is looking at China. And that's also something very dear to the government and to the officials at various levels of government. I try to make China look and sound better and try to contribute to improving China's image internationally. It is seen as an important part of a campaign for what is called software. And therefore as a result the Chinese media today are still very much torn between serving the government objectives on the one hand and monitoring problems on the other hand. And media tend to push the envelope as they do anywhere else so the gap and the conflict are always there. And again on the side of the media there is nothing sinister or nothing with arterial motives etc. They just want to have proper investigative journalism. So there is a fine line between objectivity and the social responsibility between news and official secret. And CCTV news for instance have little choice in delivering government lines when the chips are down. But overall it may depend on one's point of view whether the glass is half empty or half full. And I see it. This is a dynamic process and things are evolving as we speak. Now let me end with three points for future development. One is that China still has a long way to go in putting this housing order in terms of media reform. We must have media legislation so that media organisations can go by the rule of law. Well economic power is indispensable. A higher moral ground is essential in getting other countries to pay attention. Personally I think that understanding the differences by other countries can help but for China to command trust and admiration is a different matter altogether. At the end of the day we in China need a deeper social change over longer periods to cultivate cultural values hospitable to the rule of law, protection of minority interests and transparency of governments. Two, as China's media continue to grow they will need to introduce changes in line with international norms and the professional standards. There is a ready recognition on the part of official media about the built-in structural problems that CCTV and others must change or lose their competitive edge in the audience. But again government sponsored international broadcasts and publications are a natural extension of their domestic operations with more or less the same mentality, same skills, same group of people more or less with same limitations. So I think there is a long way for China's media to go before they can get China fully connected and for Chinese media to be taken seriously internationally. Lastly I think there must be a more active conversation between China and international media organisations. Chinese reporters and editors should engage with their western counterparts in meaningful exchanges to learn about each other way of doing things. International communication is not a one-way street, it's not an export of force, but it's a dialogue and it's a convergence of views. And here of course Phoenix television is always ready to help whatever way we can. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed for this very valuable insider's perspective that adds a lot to the palette that we've presented to you here. Now I see people are rushing to the tubes that are no more and I'm therefore taking the executive decision being the director that we're not going to have questions but we're going to move straight to the end of the proceedings so that you can either run for that tube or run for the food and the drinks which are presented on two levels, one directly outside here and one upstairs. And do please spread out and do please be aware of the fact that most of the food is actually upstairs. Now as you and I hope as many of you as possible can stay and I hope that you will continue the conversation that we have started. What we're trying to do here I think you've heard is new, is meaningful, is significant, is perhaps daring and courageous and we really really want to take it forward with your help and with your participation. So please talk to us and please let's get into action. Anyone wearing one of these gold coloured badges is someone you can talk to to take this conversation forward. Before we do so I believe that we have a small token of our appreciation for our four speakers which is now as I make this sentence longer and longer being taken towards the table and will be handed over amidst the sound of your applause. Thank you.