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FACE TO FACE
April
2002 Issue The era of the Asian Tigers is over, at least for the short term, as the region's economies limp along and foreign direct investment continues to be funnelled into Mainland China. Analysts predict China's surging economic growth will add some strain to Asia's struggling economies but this is expected to favor the region in the long term. Bulletin Editor Malcolm Ainsworth spoke with the Chamber's Asia-Africa Committee Chairman, Deborah Annells, about the region's prospects. Following are excerpts from that interview. China is enjoying unprecedented popularity as a place for foreign companies to invest. Where does that leave Asian nations? Of course many Asian nations are the ones who are investing in China, because they use China for cheap manufacturing also. Take Japan, for example, or Taiwan, and of course Hong Kong, a substantial part of our manufacturing has moved into China. I think it makes everybody more prosperous. As the world is also becoming more international, it is not just the Americans and Europeans who are using China for manufacturing nowadays, it is also other Asian nations. Are they in danger of hollowing out their economies? Not at all. They are only using China for particular purposes, like manufacturing. We all hear of the story of there being 300,000 to 400,000 Taiwanese living in Shanghai, but what are they doing? They are primarily manufacturing computer bits, chips, wafers and so forth, so the wealth that they generate from doing business there ultimately still trickles back to Taiwan. Do you think the string of political scandals in the region, rather than China and recession, has led to international investors losing interest in Asia? I think transparency has always been an issue in this region. People who live and work here understand the issues, but from afar, the way that markets work is not entirely clear, so I think some scandals have probably affected how international investors use this region. What do you think Asian nations need to do to regain their roar? I think all of them have to be more transparent than they were. If they can get their political systems back into order, they will then regain credibility. People on the ground will also have to go up the value chain. They are no longer cheap manufacturing jurisdictions, now China is. So therefore, to take advantage of this, Asian personnel have to move up the value chain, as we are doing in Hong Kong.How has rising interest in China affected the Asia-Africa Committee? It is true to say that our numbers have diminished slightly, but also the size of the China Committee has increased. But it is also a reflection that Asian companies are deploying fewer personnel in Hong Kong, and so obviously send fewer numbers of their staff to attend our meetings. That said, we still attract a lot of interest through our high quality events, and I must say all our meetings are very informative and very good -- people who attend our meetings always enjoy them and learn something. So that has to be a good sign. You organized some very interesting missions last year, to Myanmar and North Korea, for example. How successful were they? The irony here is that successful trade missions tend to be to countries that are difficult to visit or are opening up, say Myanmar or North Korea. So people are interested to see what is going on there, but it is actually very difficult, still, to go and establish a business or business contact there. While I think the missions were very successful, that doesn't mean lots of trade resulted immediately from those visits, but hopefully that will come in due course. What is the committee planning for the next 12 months? We aim to have something happening every month. We have our committee meetings where we have a guest speaker speaking about something topical -- our last talk was about the Japanese yen, so that was very interesting. We have a full schedule lined up for the first half of this year, including a fellowship evening, so it is not all information orientated, we are going to have a horse racing evening, for example. People don't always just want information gathering exercises. The Chamber itself has been holding cocktail evenings which have been very successful, and that is a good way of mingling with and meeting other people. You are very active in the Chamber and hold a very responsible position as Vice President, Global Wealth Structuring, at The Citigroup Private Bank, which must be demanding on your time. What do you personally get out of investing so much of your time in the Chamber? I think people underestimate the importance of having a chamber. I've benefited tremendously from being a member of the Chamber. In the very beginning, I was a deputy representative for someone, who in my original work, never came to meetings. He always used to say, "Debbie, you go to the meeting for me," and so I just used to turn up. Then I left that job and joined a new organization and I thought, gosh I still want to belong to the Chamber! So I made them join, and I then joined the committee in my own capacity. Then I was voted on as deputy chair and then as chair person. If I've benefited tremendously from it, that is because I've put a lot into it as well. I think it is quid pro quo: you put a lot in, you get a lot out. If you do nothing, you get nothing. Also, you can access anyone in Hong Kong through the Chamber more easily than any other way actually. And if you want to find something out you can find the answer much more quickly. So to that extent the Chamber it is a tremendous enabling mechanism. |
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