25th January, 2008

Being a particular fan of our former PM it was of course inevitable that the task of writing up a summary of his lunchtime presentation last week in Las Vegas at our Asian Conference fell to me. Duly vetted and approved by his office I include it below. I didn’t think it worthy of mention in my official report, but Mr. Blair claimed never to have laid a bet in his life. I, on the other hand, went to Sin City with no such principles. However, as I was about to board the plane leaving Vegas at the end of the week it struck me that my betting activity had been limited to one brief and fruitless session on a slot machine at 1.30am on Wednesday morning when I lost the princely sum of $6. Bu**er that I thought to myself. I felt lucky. So I returned to a bank of machines in the airport departure lounge and two spins later won $28. So it was I flew down to Los Angeles, squashed between two large Americans, a happy man. Go me.




*** My write up of our Tony’s address at CLSA Forum in Las Vegas - very boring stuff but see if you can spot the message I sent which by-passed his office which insisted in pre-scanning my contribution for suitability before publishing it....think Acrostics



The Financial Times recently ran an article reporting Mr. Blair’s appointment at JP Morgan, which included the following sentence. “While there is no template for a life after Number 10, most former incumbents have lolled back on the cushion of inherited wealth and busied themselves writing books, pursuing their hobbies or love of whisky . . .”

Over the course of an hour-and-a-half, ( at our Forum in Vegas ) Mr Blair left an audience of more than 700 delegates at CLSA’s Asia InvestorsForum in Las Vegas in no doubt that this was certainly not an avenue that he would be following. The audience was captivated by the former Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s insightful speech putting Asia’s rising economic influence into a geopolitical context. Furthermore, his handling of the Q&A session displayed a passion and command of a wide range of subjects that suggest progress on his most critical and pressing mandate as Envoy to the Middle East Quartet will indeed be made.

Since 1988, when Mr Blair made his first visit to China and India, change, he explained, has been startling, not just with regard to their economies, but also, particularly talking about China, attitudes, skill sets and the landscape have all been transformed. The opportunities are obvious as the roomful of investors knows only too well, but Mr Blair warned that we should be aware of the pressures that China and India are grappling with. On a recent visit to China, Mr Blair was told by one of the Chinese authorities he met that we really need to understand just one thing about China. That is that almost 65% of China’s population are employed in agriculture versus about 3% typically in the West. The Chinese leaders face the monumental challenge of transitioning countless millions into an urban economy and will not let any external pressure compromise their ability to manage this task. Mr Blair pointed to the defeat of the BJP in 2004, attributing it in large part to disgruntled and economically disenfranchised rural voters as evidence of some of the ramifications of failing to managing this issue satisfactorily.

So, while appreciating the huge opportunity China represents, the West needs to understand these pressures. Yet China’s hunger for commodities, the trade imbalance and China’s undervalued currency risk provoking a response from the West which would represent a form of brinkmanship which Mr Blair warned would be dangerous. Rather he urged political and economic leaders in the West to consider a partnership approach in dealing with China and pointed to a test case which could help shape the relationship over the decade to come.

Environmental challenges are now very much on the agenda and the West needs to accept that it may have to do more than it initially believes it should in addressing the issue of climate change while understanding that China is not necessarily in a position to make significant concessions, given its internal economic pressures.

Recognising this would represent a major step forward in relations between the US/Europe and the developing world, Mr Blair highlighted the importance of this matter by conceding that he probably had not paid sufficient attention to it in his time in office. While an optimist, he is not sure that policymakers generally in the West have yet developed a sufficiently sophisticated approach to handling relations with China.