CHINESE VICE-PRESIDENT Xi Jinping’s visit to Ireland is a major event in this country’s international agenda and provides a real opportunity to deepen relations with the emerging world power. Mr Xi will later this year become the principal leader of his country as a new generation takes control. His decision to come to Ireland following his trip to the United States is deeply significant, since this is the only European Union state he is visiting before going on to Turkey. He tells this newspaper today how he values Chinese-Irish links, stresses the strategic importance of the EU for China and explains the problems his country faces.
Ireland has much to gain from this encounter, not least by understanding why Mr Xi believes China has so much to gain from developing better relations with us – despite the extraordinary differences in scale and culture between the two peoples. A key factor is the level of economic and human development now reached by China and the further progress it wants to make. The period of primary industrialisation out-sourced from the rest of the world which has provided urban employment for some 200 million workers is coming to an end. Its leaders must prepare to move up the value chain towards an economy and society based more on higher technology, services, domestic consumption and welfare and a more accountable and open political system. Mr Xi will be leading this, hopefully in a reforming spirit, and believes we can help them learn about making the transition.
As they do so there should be huge opportunities for Ireland. This country’s biotechnology, communications, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, food, tourism and education sectors are identified as particularly relevant partners between the two countries. Trade levels are already high and so far to Ireland’s net benefit. Investment both ways has also great potential - including possibly in Irish bonds. Mr Xi says “the institutional innovation and economic miracles in Ireland have offered China much food for thought in conducting reform and opening-up.”
Ireland’s place in the EU is put centre stage by the visit. Mr Xi says China takes its relationship with the EU as one of its strategic priorities, and supports European integration. He asks for Ireland’s help in developing his country’s links with what is now the world’s largest economy and China’s top trade partner. The Chinese want support from the EU in return, including to declare it a market economy, conferring definite advantages in their trading relationship.
Chinese leaders are self-critical on how far they have yet to go in meeting these ambitious objectives. As Mr Xi says, their’s is still “the largest developing country in the world”. It faces deep internal political challenges. Human rights and democratic change are part and parcel of development, enabling economic progress and socio-political transition. Ireland should communicate the essential lessons we have learned about them too, in a spirit of honest engagement about our shared experience.