CIC calls on Europe to open up to China

European nations should ease visa limits to welcome Chinese consumers and be more open to foreign investors, an executive of China's US$482 billion sovereign wealth fund said yesterday.

Jesse Wang Jianxi, an executive vice-president of China Investment Corp, said that as Europe sought to revive its economy it should learn from Hong Kong and gradually remove travel restrictions, just as Hong Kong and mainland China had done since 1998.

"Since then, mainlanders have poured into Hong Kong, boosting tourism revenue and sending retail sales soaring," Wang said at a financial forum hosted by Caijing Magazine. "The policy helped Hong Kong recover from … the Asian financial crisis and set it on a quick path to recovery."

He said Chinese visitors were keen to venture to Europe and a more relaxed visa policy could tap into this demand and help pull euro-zone countries back from the brink of recession.

Public-private partnerships should also be allowed to attract investment from outside Europe, Wang said. "If public investment is insufficient, the countries should try harder to encourage private investment and foreign investment," he said.

Wang said CIC was aware of a British Finance Ministry report that the government needed £200 billion (HK$2.5 trillion) by 2015 to fund energy, transport, communications and waste-treatment projects. "If there is not enough public money for the projects, the [British] government should attract private and foreign investment," he said.