Executive Director's blog

First of all I would like to wish all readers a very ‘Happy New Year’ and express the hopes that it will prove to be less challenging than the past two years though as you will see I have my doubts about that. It seems to have been a long and cold holiday but I am sure that with a new year upon us now we are all looking to see if there will be opportunities ahead.  The one thing that is certain is that one man’s downturn is another’s ‘uptick’! So let us hope that we are all in the frame for an ‘uptick’

It has been quite a week as I attended the 13th CIFIT which took place as ever at Xiamen and these are some of the impressions and thoughts that emerged from the two days that I was there.

We are at the height of the holiday season and so the City is relatively quiet but with the slackening of pressure comes the opportunity for a bit of introspection as well.  The things that I have been reflecting on are obviously how the rest of the year will unfold and when we really see some clear evidence to show that there are genuine grounds to say that the global economy is recovering.

The week for me, as I suppose for many of you has been dominated by sport! Obviously for those of us with a Golfing bent the British Open at Turnberry was an absolute must and the reaction of the spectators to Tom Watson’s attempt to wrest the ‘Claret Jug’ trophy from younger competitors at the age of 59 was nail biting stuff.

Here we are in the midst of the Hong Kong summer with scorching temperatures and high humidity, air conditioners running flat out to make the temperatures livable, which if the scientists are believed is simply stoking up the temperatures even further.  What is the solution one might ask? Can we individually make a difference?

You would think that this would be a quiet time as in most years yet to my surprise it has proved to be full of different things.  The subjects that have struck me most have been a couple of briefings which members have given recently. The first of given by James Pearson of Black Swan gave an uncannily clear briefing on the global economic forces that are reaching us even here in Hong Kong.  I have to say that I found the well argued conclusions that he came to troubling.

The dominant features of the week have of course been the 12th Anniversary of the change of sovereignty and the creation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China and for me the opportunity to attend the 5th Members Congress of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Guangzhou.