As announced on 30 November 2015, the City of Ghent has become a new structural partner of the Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC). With its 252,000 inhabitants, Ghent is the second largest city in Flanders.
Over 70,000 students make Ghent the largest student city in Flanders, including Ghent University that ranks 71st on the ‘2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities’. The young heart of the city boosts innovation and creativity. Ghent is a city that combines a strong logistic and industrial complex and hi-tech knowledge activities. The city’s seaport provides over 60,000 jobs and generates a surplus value of €6,7 billion. The city is developing a pro-active approach to attract activities of world-leading companies that strengthen the existing industrial clusters in the cleantech, biotech, materials and ICT sector.

Ghent is linked with China in various ways:

• In November 2013 Ghent and the Chinese city of Weihai signed an agreement within the context of the China-EU Partnership on Sustainable Urbanization.
• Various companies in Ghent do business with China. Volvo Car Gent is one of the biggest employers of the Ghent region. The factory is part of the Volvo Car, owned since 2010 by China’s Geely Holding Group.
• Ghent is an attractive city for Chinese tourists to visit.
• The City of Ghent, together with Ghent University, the Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce and Port of Ghent form the China Platform, a central point of contact for all matters relating to China. It directs, coordinates and supports initiatives in education, research and business.

I am from Ghent where I also attended the university to study engineering.
See the text here: City of Ghent and FCCC
Beijing has a special representative of the University,

As many people have requested the full version, here it is (click to download the PDF!):
Outlook2016full

Since my newsletter came out, I only get the confirmation of the trend we are witnessing. Still, many people are naïve and belief all is well. Even China Daily continuous to mention how difficult the economic situation is. Those people with rosy glasses better read a bit more China Daily, SCMP and other.
The clampdown on the media, and the Internet, is worse. During the “Two Meetings” many people became desperate as their VPN stopped working (I survived it very well, thank you). TV, newspapers, Internet: are systematically cleaned up. Even artists have to serve the Party and its goals first. Never mind art. Call it all now Propaganda.
Social unrest is starting to get worse. As the NYT and other media reported, there were “2,700 strikes and protests last year (related to labor issues), more than double the number of 2014. In January 2016 alone: 500. Closing down the zombie SOE, cutting wages, not paying salaries are all having their impact. Sadly to say, workers’ rights are a joke (Please call Marx to do something in China?). The workers who are not paid for month and protest: the police “cleans them up”.
Imports and especially exports are going further down. Real estate: as I always mentioned, different bubbles depending on what segment of the market you are looking at. But one aspect many overlook: while new housing sells sometimes very well, the existing stock does not disappear as hoped. Seems only Shanghai can justify the increasing price levels.
So, as I said, fasten seat belts. But don’t just run away yet.

On 14 March another talk to around 30 delegates from the MBA group of the University of New Hampshire, a regular in Beijing.
As usual in Novotel Peace.

I felt the Professor was a bit surprised or even uneasy with my rather dark view on the situation today in China. They had another presentation earlier by the vice president of a large and very well know foreign company, with extensive operations in China. His views were pretty upbeat, contrary to mine.
Later I got feedback on the comments from Chinese participants who were not offended at all and agreed with my views. Confirms to me that quite a number of people are too worried that certain things are being said: call it being too cautious, without reason. Of course all depends on the audience.
As I mention in the beginning of the presentation, the idea is to give a different view on China. Actually my views are very accurate and are based on solid information, in line with well-know economists. The same day I was reading China Daily: it said much the same: “the situation is grim”. My “Outlook 2016” gives a more complete and balanced view, more on that in another post.
Other speakers often tend to sugarcoat the situation, giving a rosy picture of a bad situation. They do this to please officials. Because they work for a major company (selling to China) they are worried their “frank views” might damage their relation with the government,. They also have bosses and are thus careful. So, I do not really criticize them that much. But some can also completely ignore reality, like wondering if they ever lived and worked in China.
Having speakers from the financial/economics area would result in a different view as they don’t have this limitation. Same like me and on top of that I don’t have a boss to micro-manage me.
Exactly this week the media were full of rather dark announcements on curtailing any “divergent views” – and on the growing amount on cases of social unrest in the country.
As I always explain, the students must be able to listen to different points of view to make up their mind. In this respect I also encourage organizers to let them listen to officials, even if their talks are boring, contain little of relevant information and normally never answer a serious question. It is part of the learning curve!