PRESIDENT MARY McAleese this week and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin last month have paid visits to China, meeting high- profile leaders, promoting better relations with Ireland and going to the huge World Expo in Shanghai. They mark the growing importance of China for this country and underline the need to reinforce the relationship with personal experience. Since this is a distinctive cultural feature of both countries it is good to see such prominence being given to it at such a high level, building on the contacts made by Taoiseach Brian Cowen when he was there with a large group six months ago.
That China matters is readily apparent from the economic statistics. One hundred and fifteen Irish companies are doing business there – three times more than seven years ago. China is now Ireland’s seventh largest trade partner, its value currently put at €4 billion per annum. Opportunities for expanded business mentioned during these visits include biopharmacy, education services, aviation leasing and training, software and IT and engineering.
Commonalities also exist, notwithstanding the huge differences in scale and physical distance between the two countries, which can only enhance the potential for closer relations. Foreign direct investment is a crucial driver of development in both states – and so, increasingly, is investment overseas by China and Ireland. Chinese investment here should be encouraged as it becomes more mobile and sophisticated. Ireland has made the transition from a largely rural to a largely urban society comparatively recently, and can offer the Chinese some lessons about how this happened. Both countries have a large overseas diaspora with a crucial role to play in economic development and giving access to other cultures. And just as the Celtic Tiger experience offers some models for development, so also does its collapse in a property bubble the Chinese are currently scrambling to avoid.
If the relationship is to deepen over coming years certain essential cultural bridges will also have to be built. The large and flourishing Chinese community in Ireland includes students who have come here to learn English and then stayed. Partly for this reason it is now much more difficult for young Chinese to make the journey because of visa difficulties and other bureaucratic obstacles. That urgently needs to be changed, as Ireland is losing out on a potentially valuable market which other European states are only too anxious to service. Mutual exchange of post-graduate students has a strong potential to expand.
If we are to get to know China better we will have to make it easier to learn its language. Confucius institutes in several universities are now attracting third-level students to study Mandarin. Recent experiments in teaching the language at secondary level should be strongly encouraged. More generally the educational system could do much more to expand our knowledge about this great civilisation, building on the pioneering work of institutions like the Chester Beatty library.