Dear netizens. This is Xinhuanet Exclusive Interview. Today we have great honor to have Sir Sebastian Wood, British Ambassador to China, as our guest. Welcome, your excellency. Last month, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang paid an official visit to Britain and Greece. During his trip in UK, he stressed that China should make further efforts to develop "a partnership of common growth and inclusive development" with Britain.
1. Q: Your excellency, what do you think is the greatest gain or biggest highlight from Premier Li's visit?
A: It was terrific visit, and I was back in London accompany Premier Li, the single thing which I personally enjoy the most was participating in the meeting between Perrier Li and her majesty the Queen in Wisner castle. That was a great event in Windsor castle, extremely beautiful setting for such a good meeting. It was exciting encounter between Premier Li and British Prime Minister Cameron, because today the UK and China partnership bring us together the world most emerging economic, which is China, with world most dynamic developed economic, which is the UK. I don’t know if the Chinese viewers may be aware that at the moment UK is growing faster than any other major developed economics, we are growing 3 times as fast as Germany, 5 times as fast as France, so there is really era of optimism and dynamism in British economic. And when you bring that together with China, that is a great potential, we saw big business deals, we saw 40 billion pounds worth of business deals, we saw particular highlight in energy, big deal on oil and gas, the prospect a big dea;in future civil nuclear energy. We saw big step forward in financial relationship with RMB clearing bank announced for London, and we saw some big inward investment deals from China into the UK. So that would probably be the highlight of the very significant trade investment deals between two countries.
2. Q: According to media reports, there is a "blowout" in Chinese enterprises' investment in the UK. What do you think are the reasons for this situation? What factors attract foreign investment in Britain?
A: The first reason is the UK is open, we have always said to Chinese partners and Chinese government, we are the most open western economic to Chinese investment, and over the last 2 or 3 years , the Chinese enterprises have taken that message, and started to come to the UK ,and make big investment, So within the space of 18 months we have see as much of investment from China as we had in the previous 30 years, that is incredible acceleration. There are other reasons too, one is that London is great base, if you want to internationalize your business and brand, and so it is terrific place for Chinese companies that try to.go global. And the UK also the best root into the single market of EU, which is I think still china’s largest oversea market, and we have very transparent, predicable, reliable investment environment, and we don’t give special favors to investors. We treat all investor exactly the same. So every investors know where they stand, and they fell long-term confident in security of their investments in the UK. So we pride ourselves on being among the very best investment environment for foreign companies and we open to all countries equally, including China. And that why we can see the explosive growth in Chinese investment over last 2 years.
3. Q: Last year, British Prime Minister Cameron successfully visited China and achieved a lot, especially in bilateral economic and trade exchanges. As you know, how is the follow-up situation to implement and expand the achievements?
A: In the Period of between David Cameron here in last December and Premier Li to visit UK two weeks ago. We did a lot together, I would highlight an important visit by the State Councillor Yang Jiechi to London, he have strategic dialogue meeting with British Foreign Secretary William Hague. This the high level dialogue between us which focus on international security issues and foreign policy issues. So they talk in depth about subject ranging from Iran to security to East Asia. We also had a very successful people to people dialogue. When ministers for health, culture and science visited China, met with Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong, and that was really a giant celebration of education, cultural and science relationship, which is one of the most vibrant parts of our relationship. And we have the further good results on trade and investment. Secretary of State for Business Vince Cable, visited China in May, and he visited 5 different cities, and he brought a lot of British companies with him. And we saw significant step forward in digital industry, creative industry, in advance manufactory, education sector, all the thing happened between David Cameron came here in last December and Chinese Premier Li visited UK in June. So there were lot of momentum in the relationship right now.
4. Q: So far, the UK has become China's biggest cooperative partner of educational projects. There are more than 100,000 Chinese students studying in the UK every year.During Premier Li's visit, he pointed that China will send 10,000 students to study in UK at public expense. With the increasing number of Chinese students going to UK, how do you look at this?
Under such circumstances, has UK adopted or will it adopt any sort of measures to keep up the teaching quality?
A: For many years, the Chinese students have been the largest group among all foreign students in the UK. Just as you said, we now have more than 100,000 students. That is a big number. But it’s going up about 10% a year, which is something we’re very pleased to see. There is no limit for us on the number of Chinese students in the UK. As far as quality is concerned, I think that the British education is a very strong brand and has very strong reputation internationally. We have independent quality assurance systems and bodies which look at university courses in the UK and assess them for their quality. We’ve also got encouraging international survey data. There is a survey of universities globally called the QS survey. And last year, that surveyed the opinion of 27,000 different employers around the world. And they rated British graduates as the most employable from any country. They also rated five of the top ten universities. So I don’t have any concerns about the quality. I think we have the system to ensure that the quality is maintained. And one of the thing I’d like to say, sometimes I hear that people say that is not possible for Chinese students to work in Britain when they graduated. That is actually the case. If a graduate can get a graduate-level job in the company of the UK, they can stay and work, getting working experience after they graduated. What we’re trying to do is to put wide-range British companies more systematically in touch with Chinese graduates, to facilitate the purpose. Because I think it’s beneficial for the Chinese graduates and students, but also beneficial for the Britain.
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