British businesses are maintaining their long-term optimism and commitment to China based on seasoned judgment on the market's development, said Peter Burnett, the Chief Executive Officer of the China-Britain Business Council.
Burnett, head of the UK's national business network promoting trade and investment with China, said that UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy's visit to China last week has helped restore business confidence that had been lacking due to limited government-to-government dialog.
"This visit is one that has been much anticipated for quite a few weeks, months, indeed years, although there's been a change of government of course in the United Kingdom," he said.
Burnett noted that businesses are resilient and self-sufficient, with a strong understanding of their markets and customers. And not a single member of the CBBC decided to pull out, Burnett stressed, highlighting a general optimistic outlook on the Chinese economy.
"CBBC members, they know the markets, they understand their customers, they are all very good at business strategy. And that has never really changed in China. But the missing piece for the last few years has been this government-to-government engagement, that G-to-G dialogue is really, really important because it restores that level of confidence. You need to have confidence, if you're an exporting or an investing business, you need to have confidence in both markets, and that confidence has really returned in the last -- not completely, but it is returning, I would say -- in the course of the last three months or so," Burnett said.
"Fundamentally, businesses will look after themselves, they know the markets, they know their customers. As I have spoken to CBBC membership, I have never, I have not heard any of them say 'we don't, we don't have confidence in the future of China's economy.' And I haven't heard one of them say 'we're thinking of pulling out'," Burnett said.
China's fiscal authorities have applied a range of policies this year aimed at expanding effective domestic demand. Regarding this, Burnett said that British companies are encouraged by such measures.
"We've seen interest rates cuts, we have seen support for the stock market, for banks, for real estate, for local government financing vehicles, to address some of these deflationary concerns and basically to bring confidence back into the consumer market, into the consumption market, the real estate market, the stock exchange market, and the investment market. We're encouraged certainly by these measures. The members of CBBC really don't have a problem with the long term trajectory of Chinese economy," he said.
British companies remain confident of Chinese economy: trade body chief
