Huge benefit to upping market share in China

Sino-Irish relations may go back as far as the mysterious ‘Chinese Celts’, but Bette Browne says there is room to improve modern ties to the newly crowned biggest economy in the world

WHEN I worked in Hong Kong over two decades ago and was asked where I was from I got used to saying Europe, realising the Chinese didn’t have a clue where Ireland was.

Now, much of that has changed as Ireland aggressively woos the Chinese market, as evidenced by President Michael D Higgins’ state visit this week, but we still have a lot of catching up to do.

China reached a milestone earlier this year, despite lingering economic woes, when it overtook America as the world’s biggest economy. Yet we are a long way off wooing Beijing as ardently as we court Washington, though the President’s visit will undoubtedly help that balancing act.

The communist country’s gross domestic product is now worth $17.6tn (€14.2tn) against the US’s $17.4tn. This is based, however, on purchasing power parity (PPP), or adjustments for prices of goods and services. When no such adjustments are made, China’s GDP is $10.4tn So Beijing isn’t popping the champagne just yet.

Still, the International Monetary Fund believes that if China sticks to its reform plans, its expansion can continue apace. The Irish Government is increasingly aware of this and the visit by President Higgins, along with Finance Minister Michael Noonan and Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Charlie Flanagan, comes hard on the heels of a trade mission last month by Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney.

If we can boost our share of the market in a country of 1.3bn people, the benefits will be enormous, not just for the agriculture sector but across the board.

In the first six months of the year, Ireland exported €405m in dairy food products and drinks to China, marking a €105m jump on last year’s figure. But we’re still lagging behind countries such as New Zealand.

Compared to our half a billion euro, New Zealand is exporting about €15bn worth of food and drink to China.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Mr Coveney acknowledged during his visit, but he also predicted that, over the next five to 10 years, the market to China could increase five to tenfold. This will undoubtedly be helped if, as expected, China soon lifts its ban on beef imposed in 2000 after the BSE crisis.

The Industrial Development Authority, which now has offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, is also upbeat about what has been achieved.

“Ireland already plays host to leading Chinese firms, many of them with a global footprint,” an IDA spokesperson told me. The global Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, for example, announced plans to expand its research and development arm in Ireland in 2013.

Ireland’s location also appeals to China, the IDA emphasised. “Chinese companies can link up the disparate parts of their global operations in one hub that is perfectly placed between North America and Europe,” said the spokesperson.

China also offers huge potential for Ireland in such areas as education and tourism.

About 5,000 Chinese students each year come to study here or are studying in Irish-run programmes in China. Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan, who also visited China this year on missions to Beijing and Shanghai with representatives from our top colleges, believes that number can be “dramatically increased”.

We should hope she’s right because the figures are tantalising — no fewer than 300m people in China are learning English. Providing the debacle involving the closure of at least eight English language schools this year does not do irreparable damage to Ireland’s reputation, this is an extremely lucrative area.

But we can’t just sit back and wait for the Chinese to come to us — be they students or tourists, especially the high-end spenders. We need to promote Mandarin far more in our schools and also encourage its use in hotels and businesses.

Printing a menu in Mandarin, for example, wouldn’t cost much but the gesture would be welcoming. And why not have more signs at our major airports in Mandarin. These small measures would go a long way to making Ireland an even friendlier destination for Chinese visitors.

MEANWHILE, in China, Tourism Ireland has also upped its game. It now has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. A sales mission in September that targeted tour operators in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou found growing awareness of Ireland, boosted by the visit here in 2012 of then vice president Xi Jinping, now the country’s leader, who seems to delight in returning our hospitality with a dazzling Chinese céad míle fáilte for President Higgins, who has invited him to make a state visit here.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 Chinese visited Ireland last year, which was a significant increase on the 2012 figure of about 17,000, and coverage of the Irish state visit this week is bound to generate more interest in travelling here.

Niall Gibbons, chief executive officer of Tourism Ireland, told me he wants to increase the number of visitors to 50,000 per year over the coming four years.

Certainly, there is huge potential to grow those numbers, bearing in mind that while 48m Chinese travelled to various world destinations last year, the number is forecast to reach 74m by 2020.

Gibbons is determined that we should expand our share of that market. “The majority of our overseas visitors come from Great Britain, North America, and mainland Europe and while this will continue it is important that we expand our focus beyond these markets and look to the long-term opportunities presented by new tourism markets like China,” he says.

Indeed, we have now become a much easier destination for Chinese travellers. While they still cannot fly directly to Dublin, a single combined visa allows Chinese visiting the UK to also visit Ireland or those visiting Ireland to also take in the UK.

The Chinese also happen to like Ireland. A Chinese friend once told me this is partly because of our history and the fact we’ve never been colonisers. Perhaps the “Celtic Chinese” could also have something to do with it.

The story of the mysterious Celtic Chinese centres on the discovery over a decade ago of Bronze Age mummies whose features suggested — and DNA tests later established — were Celts who had penetrated well into China. The mummies were found in the area around Xinjiang in the western part of the country and they are now housed in a museum in Urumqi, the region’s capital.

So, like the Celtic Chinese before us, the signs are that we can benefit enormously by widening our circle of friends and looking eastwards again.