Linguistic maps of Mandarin in mainland China/Taiwan/Hainan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Dr Alf raises an important question :
How should the UK leverage greater Chinese investment?
The question which is very relevant to the future prospects of our UK young people and the overall prosperity of the country itself.
What the UK Government should be doing is sitting down with the Chinese to work out where our innate inventiveness and their ability to get things done or made can be harnessed for mutual benefit.
This should happen under a replacement for David Cameron who infuriates most true Conservatives almost as much as he does the Chinese.
With a new person, plus much better negotiators than anyone we have sent to China so far, we would undertake to:
1 Make it easier for Chinese tourists to come here and spend money by revamping and fast tracking the visa system
2) Make our tax system competitive, so as to encourage inward investment and inward migration of Chinese billionaires most of whom choose America, Canada and even more recently Malta, as a new place to live
3) Encouraging our brightest students to study for a time in China having put them through Pimsleur style Mandarin first – Their business students already do this in reverse, which gives them an advantage since they understand both our management practices and their own.
4) Fast track planning applications and cut red tape for inwardly investing Chinese firms willing to employ set numbers of indigenous workers
5) Sell infrastructure bonds with a high “coupon” to raise money from their Sovereign Wealth Funds to build roads, airports, schools, proper flood defenses using Dutch engineers and hydrologists, high-speed rail links with bullet trains and create jobs for our people
6) Revise the planning laws and put Druids and other barriers to reform,progress and modernity back into their boxes and out of the process of political decision-making, policy formulation.
7) Get Ministers to spend more time in China and make Mandarin part of the National Curriculum
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