Conference “The evolution of China towards the knowledge society and opportunities for our companies” with Eugeni Bregolat.

This past March 27th, it was held at the headquarters of COEIC, an extraordinary lecture by the former ambassador to China, Eugeni Bregolat, where more than 40 attendees enjoyed the experiences during the 12 years presence in China in three different periods, and its vision of where China is going to.

 

The speaker gave us a quick overview of the history of China with its innovations known to before the Middle Ages like the paper , the compass, the gunpowder and the printing press, and later the travels by sea to the East Africa with up to 1.000 boats crew ( 1400-1415 ) . Then, without apparent cause, began the darkest period were became later centuries . After the Cultural Revolution, it seems like China has approached various European revolutions in different centuries in only one and is ready to overtake it. In this sense, the speaker exhibited a lot of data, some of which are in his book “The Second Revolution of China” (2007), to make clear the commitment of China to the knowledge society and technology. He highlighted that in the 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party appointed in 2006, 8 of the 9 members were engineers, and in the 18th Central Committee (2012) that has been reduced to 7 members, two of them are engineers (one of them is the President of China and general Secretary of the Communist Party, Li Yinping).

 

In 2005 , China was anticipating great risks they were taking with the future model of growth based on the “ world factory” and put the foundations to prepare from 2007 to build a new economy consolidated with the Five-Year Plan 2011-2015 that the first relevant issue is Science / Technology / Education. This plan reduced the importance of exports (“world factory” ), to promote domestic consumption and above all, the fact of accelerating progress towards the knowledge society with more technological development and education. Education is the basis of progress and this is their maximum.

 

In 2015, it is expected that 2.2% of the GDP of China will correspond to investment in innovation, and with figures that exceed 15 billion dollars of GDP, it is an astronomical figure given by many technological activity could be done. It is also expected that in 2030 there are 250-280 million university graduates.

 

Final Message : in Europe we have to collude to keep the train of technology and it is a must to start to act right now.