Why we should embrace the Chinese dragon

Everybody else is courting China, says Merryn Somerset Webb. So why shouldn't we?

It's been a long time since we believed that China was growing at 7%. So we aren't much bothered by or even very interested in the official numbers out this week showing that it definitely isn't. What we are interested in is how China is changing as it moves out of its super-fast growth phase and just how that will change things for us in the UK.

We've written several times over the last few months that we don't see China as taking a particularly different development path to that trodden by the likes of Japan and Korea. It has spent a few decades driving growth via fast export growth and infrastructure development. Now it wants to move to a more consumer-based economy; to build a strong middle class; and to carve out a new international role for itself.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.