“The latest 3 months figure for the exports from the UK to China are 18% up upon one year ago. Whether it is infrastructure or exports, or two way trades between the UK and China, things are going well.”

After the Chancellor George Osborne’s recent visit to China, Lord James Sassoon, Chairman of the China Britain Business Council did an exclusive in-depth interview with People’s Daily Online, providing deep insight on the latest hot topics between UK-China relations.

When talking about the moderating pace of Chinese economy growth, Lord Sassoon acknowledges the challenging economic conditions governments around the world are facing. “There are a lot of challenges in all our economies at this moment,” he said. However, he points out that the economic dialogue and collaboration between the UK and China is, on the contrary, improving.

Lord Sassoon has an outstanding career in the financial sector, serving in various roles at the Treasury from 2002 to 2008, at which point he began advising David Cameron on financial issues, and was appointed the UK’s first Commercial Secretary to the Treasury from May 2010 to January 2013.

When being asked to comment on the recent performance of the Chinese stock market and its impact on the real economy, Lord Sassoon compared the cases of the US, UK and China to illustrated his confidence in the Chinese economy.

He argues that the Chinese economy and the Chinese individual is “not as nearly exposed to equity investment as they are in the UK and the US” because of three reasons.

Firstly, the household investment in equity products in China is significantly lower than that of the US and the UK. “Very broadly in China, about 15% of households investments is in equity related products, in the UK it’s just over 30%, in the US it’s over 60%”. And therefore, the impact generated on the real economy in the US and the UK would be much more significant than that in China.

Secondly, in China, equity investment is more or less concentrated in a very small part of the population and therefore would be more exposed than the average. But equally, there are large part of the country where the direct impact shouldn’t be significant.

Last but not least, there is a group of “extremely able management of the economy by Chinese policies makers”, as Lord Sassoon puts it, against the very challenging conditions.

Talking about the Chinese policy makers, who Lord Sassoon has had the fortune to have more than 10 years’ experience working closely with, in his former roles in the Treasury, he seems to be full of praises and confidence.

“The way they handling the housing issues, or getting to deal with the provincial debt. Very significant progress has been made, which has been recognized internationally”.

“There is incredibly able group of policy makers whether it is in the finance ministry, the central bank, and some of the surrounding institutions. There could not be a more able group of professionally experienced economic managers. There are very able younger people coming up through the ranks. That gives underline confidences.”

However, he also acknowledges that the current transition of the Chinese economy into the New Normal stage is not easy. “Like the UK, and other countries, there are a lot of issues dealing with old industries and accumulated debts, we should not pretend those issues does not exist and China does not pretend those issues does not exist.”

“It is a challenging time and there are very good people (in China) who knows exactly what need to be done,” he adds.