Living with Dragons – life and work in China between 1988-2008

Please join us for our next OCI public talk (1-2pm UK time, 9-10 pm Beijing time) where we are delighted to welcome author Giles Chance to discuss reflections from 20 years living and working in China during a time of rapid change.

Giles witnessed at first hand the remarkable changes and development in China over the 20 years from 1988 to 2008. When he first visited China it was still showing the effects of the Cultural Revolution in that many Chinese were fearful.  In this talk, he will share with us personal experiences of living and working in China by looking back now to 1988 and reflecting on how such a dramatic change and development could be possible, and how the emergence of China affected the global economy, from about 1995, in ways which at the time were not understood.  

 Giles will look at the following key factors driving the change with examples: 

• Leadership - the vital leadership of Deng, and other leaders such as Zhu Ronji and and Jiang Zemin; 

• The Chinese people – ordinary people welcomed this liberalisation and opening up with great enthusiasm, and private enterprise appeared everywhere from small township enterprises to large e-commerce companies;  

• The welcome from the world outside China - The decision by America to bring China into the World Trade Organisation in November 1999 had a huge impact not only on China, but also on the rest of the world, a point which is not well recognised in the west.  

His encounters and analysis of events from both an economist and first-hand personal angels as an outsider will enable a better understanding of China today and even tomorrow.

Giles' new book 'Living with Dragons' was published in August 2024 and focuses on his personal story as an early pioneer in Chinese business interaction with the West.

Please register for the talk here on Eventbrite.

The talk will be held online via MS Teams and will be recorded and made available afterwards on the Online Confucius Institute website. You will be sent the MS Teams link after you register for the talk.

We look forward to seeing you there!