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Tao’s relationship with his own native land was fraught with difficulty, however, as the advent of the Cultural Revolution precluded him from visiting home until 1977 and Trudi mentioned the difficult time experienced by his brother during that turbulent era in the nation’s history. There were 8 members on the initial I.C.C.S. trip to China which lasted from 28th May to Sunday 13th April 1980 with Antonia Healy, pictured here at the Great Wall, being spokesperson for the group. Bar the flights to Hong Kong everything was taken care of by their Youxie hosts. The group began their sojourn by travelling to the mainland by train and they were greeted by a huge delegation on their arrival in Guangzhou, a sign of the high status being accorded to them. At that time, China was a land of standardised lamps, giant posters of Stalin and Lenin dominating public spaces, industrial chimney stacks belching black smoke into the air and everyone dressed in Mao suits except for the children who constituted an oasis of colour.
While in Beijing the group visited a school where
students worked under the watchful eye of Chairmen Mao’s
image above the blackboard and visited a Print Studio
where they got to see the craftsmen at work up close which
was a very interesting experience. They were invited to
lunch at the Irish Embassy by the Chargé d’Affaires,
Roberta Ní Bhroin, and were granted an interview in the
Great Hall of the People with a Vice President, of whom
there were quite a few apparently. Dell and the others
paid a visit to the Opera where they were regaled with a
performance of ‘The Phoenix Returns to its Nest'.
Meanwhile Trudi visited friends.
They subsequently got a night train to Datong (memories on
arrival of an infernal- looking vista of darkness and
fires as it is a coal mining area to the west of
Beijing.), but it was well worth seeing the giant Buddha,
and hundreds of smaller Buddhas. at the Yungang Caves.
They witnessed the tough working conditions endured by man
and beast while they were there: labourers carrying sheets
of steel, hauling boulders on ropes, horses struggling
under heavy loads. A visit to the dark work spaces of a
carpet factory reinforced a sense of the gruelling nature
of manual labour at the time.
At Yangzhou, Tao’s home town, (which was spared during the Japanese invasion because a monk from the village had brought Buddhism to Japan) the Head of the Art Academy painted a scroll for them which was signed by Tao’s father. Their packed itinerary also featured visits to The Teapot Museum and the Dragon Kiln, a Birth Control Clinic and a boat trip at Lake Town.
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Ambassador Kavanagh spoke about the complementary skills Ireland is in a position to offer the world’s second largest economy, urging businesses to be China-ready as bilateral trade with Ireland is growing more rapidly than with any other EU country. He apologised for disappointing any expectations some of us may have had of a Brexit-free zone by referencing present circumstances and suggesting that Ireland may do well to follow the example of New Zealand which reinvented itself, in trading terms, when Britain entered the Common Market in 1973. He then identified some areas, in particular, in which Ireland are strong and can be of help in China’s development, such as finance, ICT, pharmaceuticals and dairy products.
Klaus Christiansen, CEO of Know Your Customer Limited, pictured to the left here, began by reminding us that software is eating the world a rather ominous sounding dictum that was coined to flag the increasing importance of the aforementioned Internet of Things where everything from your car to your fridge is controlled via an online connection. Nonetheless, even in this brave new world of communicative objects, human beings will still need to communicate with each other as well and, in this regard, old-fashioned trust will be as important as ever, arguably more so as we grapple with fake news, fake Twitter accounts and millions of email accounts being hacked. Establishing identity by means of a digital ID that can always be trusted is clearly vital for business relationships in such a scenario, especially against a backdrop of tougher money-laundering legislation. Cue KYC’s Web of Trust whose blockchain generated IDs are secure, immutable and unhackable and enable businesses to be certain about the identity of potential clients, a facility which is helping Chinese investors to comply with their identity verification requirements internationally.
Mr. Christensen left us with a
quotation from Taoism’s
founding document, the Tao Te
Ching by Lao Tzu, ‘Knowing
others is intelligence
/Knowing yourself is true
wisdom/ Mastering others is
strength/Mastering yourself is
true power.’ A couple of those
challenges may be an algorithm
too far for even the most
sophisticated software but, in
the meanwhile, Know Your
Customer is certainly bringing
‘intelligence’ and ‘strength’
into the Ireland China
business equation.
The last speaker, Kraken Yu,
is the CEO of Cornerstone
International, a company
operating under the aegis of
Nova UCD (the University’s
centre for commercialisation
and enterprise support).
Cornerstone International is a
leading facilitator of
business partnerships between
Ireland and China focusing on
the software, business and
finance sectors and as such is
perfectly placed to appreciate
the potential of blockchain as
far more than just the
underpinning technology for
Bitcoin. Mr. Yu suggested that
it is at the same stage of
development as email was 25
years ago and its rapidly
growing number of applications
now includes the ancient
Chinese tradition of hongbao
as WeChat allows virtual red
envelopes containing Spring
Festival gift money to be
exchanged using WeChat pay.
Mr.Yu placed an emphasis on
researching location and
building relationships as key
ingredients for those wishing
to break into the Chinese
market. Time for our vigilant
chair, Mr. Eugene Mc Cague, of
Arthur Cox Solicitors, to draw
proceedings to a close but it
felt like just the beginning
of an exciting new era of
cooperation and innovation in
Ireland China business
relations.
