Ben, thank you so much for your time today and
for speaking to CNBC.
Pleasure to be here. I want to start off by
asking you about,
you know what are the conversations that you are having
with your business clients in terms of that macro and
commercial strategy given the current global environment.
So, so many clients are talking about
economic rebalancing, the fact that
growth in China has slowed,
but the the country's still a significant market and a
fabulous opportunity for many corporates.
At the same time, they're seeing opportunities in Southeast Asia
and India as well where growth of course remains very
strong.
Coupled with that, of course many firms are looking to
de risk supply chains.
That doesn't mean pulling supply out of China entirely,
but adding to supply in Southeast Asia and India,
just building resilience to prevent
risks of supply chain disruption owing to
geopolitical tension. And what can we expect today from that
keynote address with Dali Jet?
Do you think that we will be getting any kind
of major announcement or will that be reserved potentially for
the third Plenum,
which we still obviously haven't got a date for?
We're likely to get more affirmation of policies we've heard
over the past few weeks,
particularly around continued pursuit of industrialisation and innovation in particular,
especially when it comes to the green economy.
Clean tech has been a big driver of growth
given the number of foreign dignitaries here as well.
We're expected to hear his commitment to welcoming foreign businesses,
to seeking to preserve their role in the market and
the role of market forces and that should all be
received very well by foreign CEOs.
Yes, Speaking of foreign CEOs,
a lot of focus in the last few days in
relation to
China's push to get that foreign capital back into the
country once he had that meeting with President Xi.
I'm just wondering if you're hearing anything from your clients
in terms of their views on this.
Is there a sort of,
I guess, better sentiment when it comes to investment in
China,
do you think going forward?
So I think the sentiment has improved over the last
12 months.
I had a chance to join a round table last
night with a large number of CEOs from around the
world.
And I think generally people were very positive.
Again, recognition that the scale of the market here is
significant,
the speed of innovation is,
is significant. And that for for many of us,
learning to compete here in China means that we'll be
able to compete globally,
especially in the clean tech sectors where China
is naturally a pioneer. And
Speaking of clean tech and also noting some of the
geopolitical tensions that certainly still exist between US and China
are one concern that's been highlighted by the US Secretary
General, Janet Yellen, is about overcapacity
in China. Obviously, that's having an impact in terms of
their domestic industries like Long E for example.
But that's also obviously a concern for countries
that trade with China, right.
So I guess you know,
isn't that going to exacerbate tensions further and potentially draw
countries away?
So overcapacity has been a long standing problem for China,
particularly in new new economies sectors.
It's a challenge for domestic businesses looking to make a
profit.
But as you say, it's also a challenge for global
trade.
So it's it's a problem we'll need to deal with.
What we are though, seeing are Chinese clean tech companies
beginning to invest in manufacturing overseas,
beginning to localize production. And that could be both in
Europe or it could be in Saudi Arabia.
It's a range of countries.
And that's that's a new development,
it's a positive development. The extent to which you localize
production means that they'll obviously be support for that type
of investment,
but it also reduces trade friction.
So we have a long way to go,
but we're on the right path.