Manchester China Institute

A webinar on the impact of post-Covid economic conditions and strategic competition between China and the West, with Economist George Magnus.

For more than three decades, the global economy was defined by unbridled integration and unprecedented interdependence. Neither political spats nor localized wars could slow the globalization train. Markets were markets, business was business, and multinational firms became more multinational. Not anymore.

In this new era of strategic competition between China and the West, disengagement is the order of the day. While this trend will impede economic growth, increase business costs (via supply-chain restructuring), and raise prices for everyone, the economy that loses the most may well be China’s.

This webinar examines China and the West's mutual disengagement in the context of a post zero-Covid economy, by paying particular attention to international trade, investment and capital markets, as well as knowledge transfer, geopolitics and global technological development.

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About the Speaker

George Magnus is an independent economist and commentator, and Research Associate at the China Centre, Oxford University, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

George was the Chief Economist, and then Senior Economic Adviser at UBS Investment Bank from 1995-2012. He had a front row seat and key managerial position for multiple episodes of boom and bust in both advanced economies and emerging markets, including notably the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. George famously anticipated it in 2006-2007 with a series of research papers in which he warned of an impending Minsky Moment.

His China focus derives from a long period of observation and study that goes back to his first visit in 1994. He is a regular contributor to the Financial Times, Prospect Magazine, BBC TV and radio, Bloomberg TV and other outlets.

George’s current book, Red Flags: why Xi’s China is in Jeopardy (Yale University Press, 2018) examines China’s contemporary economic and commercial challenges and aspirations to modernity in the light of a governance system that is a throwback to much earlier times in the People’s Republic. His earlier books are The Age of Aging (2008), which investigated the effects of the unique experience of demographic change on the global economy; and Uprising: will emerging markets shape or shake the world economy? (2011) which examined the rise of China and other major emerging markets, and questioned controversially the widely accepted narrative that China was destined to rule the world.