Experts optimistic about China's reform agenda

With the rise of China's economic power and its undergoing economic restructuring, the world needs China's globalization, to entrench the process of multilateralism and fuel the global growth, experts said on Friday. They are optimistic about China's reform agenda and its long-term growth prospective.

GLOBAL PLAYER

Speaking at China Development Forum, which is co-hosted by EY and London School of Economics (LSE), Professor Craig Calhorn, Director of LSE, said China's economic growth is really unmatched in world history these last decades, and the growth is not just the GDP figure, but also the growth of the middle class.

Now "China is globalizing, it is not participating externally, it is changing the course of globalization. China is becoming a global player, and it is not the same as be an expansionist, and there is no sign that China is an expansionist in the sense of territory expansion," said Colhoun.

"Some western leaders have made clear that the world needs China to go global, we need its economic, territorial, population and cultural importance to be matched by a role international. The world needs China's fully participating the process to figure out the way to make the world multilateral, not just the question on who is dominant," he said.

Colhoun stressed that the readiness for global financial integration is an issue for China's globalization, and banking reform in China is a precondition for China being able to fully push forward Renminbi's internationalization.

China needs and is determined to move to the next level of value-added range of industries, he added.

UNPRECEDENTED GROWTH

Steve Varley, Chairman and Partner at EY United Kingdom & Ireland, said that though the Chinese economic growth rate in 2014 was the lowest since 2009, slow down of growth is not a bothering issue as long as it is gradual. And the Chinese overseas investment has expanded rapidly over the past decade.

"2015 presumably will be the 37th year of near continuous super fast growth above 6 percent, this is historically unprecedented. The average range of super fast growth period is normally nine years," Varley said.

Huo Rongrong, head of China and RMB business development at HSBC, said before 2009, the Chinese currency RMB was seldom known or even heard of, but now, China is an incredible trading partner for the world, with direct trading partnership with 127 countries, RMB has become one of the most traded currencies in the world.

In terms of capital flows, China is also playing an increasingly important role in the global arena.

Huo said that in 2014, foreign direct investment (FDI) into China was 119 billion U.S. dollars, the outward foreign direct investment (ODI) out of China is around 109 billion dollars. The ODI is expected to exceed the FDI in one or two years, therefore, China will become a global net investor.