At a meeting of entrepreneurs in London on March 15, 2016, Chairman of Heng An Standard Life Sir Gerry Grimstone expressed his confidence in China’s long-term plans leading up to 2021; spoke about how China’s opening up has long been favourable for businesses; and the outlook for UK-China relations if the UK were to leave the EU in June.

Those at the highest levels of the Chinese government have just finished their annual meetings, the Two Sessions, in which policies for the next year are set forth. This year’s meetings also set out targets for China in the next five years as part of the country’s systematic forward planning.

Sir Gerry Grimstone gives the media an audience ahead of his speech giving at an entrepreneurs' event organized by the 48 Group. [Photo by Wang Zhiyong/China.org.cn]

An over-arching aim extending up to 2021 is to make China a moderately-prosperous society, though this is an aim which will require many coordinated policies to complete. One of the key subjects is reforming state-owned enterprises—a difficult task that will require policy to address the resulting unemployment and re-education of workers in certain industries.

Grimstone expressed how relatively tough the journey would be to reform China, saying that the economic reforms in China are "much more difficult" and "much more complicated" than similar reforms in the UK during the 1980s that Grimstone helped to coordinate.

Grimstone well knows how to manage reforms of state-owned companies. He aided Thatcher’s government in the UK’s 1980s reforms, and has previously been very involved in educating Chinese politicians on how it was done.

Change of leaders in Western democracies make long-term plans hard to achieve, but China has the political and economic environment to succeed.

"I think the political system in China means it is much easier for government to experiment," Grimstone told China.org.cn, pointing to the ability of China to readily make a "U-turn" when plans do not go in the right direction. The Chinese government has the power to see through the reforms that do work and do drive towards the goal of a moderately prosperous society.

Asked whether China’s continued opening up reforms were making it any better for foreign companies to do business in China, Grimstone said that it has been easy for a long time, giving Heng An Standard Life as an example.

Heng An is the China-based operation of Standard Life. It works in partnership with an arm of the Tianjin government and has experienced success with a workforce of 5,000 employees spread throughout China.

Grimstone also stressed that China’s GDP targets and results were not necessarily a good gauge of business success. "A huge amount of intellect is wasted on whether a smidgeon of increase or decrease in the GDP figures is a portent of huge prosperity or great disaster for the global economy," Grimstone told the audience. "I tend to look through short term data and focus on the real economy where for example our own sales are growing at 20 percent a year."

How the UK leaving the European Union would affect the relationship between China and the UK was another matter of discussion that was on many people’s tongues.

The UK people are set to vote in June on whether the country should stay in the European Union. Meanwhile, during the Two Sessions, the Chinese government said that it aims to push forward the establishment of free trade agreements with numerous countries and regions, including the European Union.

Would the UK leaving the EU affect trade with China, or have an effect on the two countries' strong ties following President Xi’s state visit in October 2015?

Grimstone is already on record as saying that a Brexit (British exit from Europe) would be damaging. Speaking from an economic point of view, there will be uncertainty and resulting delays of investment in to the UK leading up to the referendum, and another two years of uncertainty after the referendum, should the UK leave the EU.

How this will effect trade from China is not clear, but it should not affect investment in to the UK.

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