Harvard China Review | The 11th Annual Conference

In order to provide alternative investment tools and financing channels for Chinese enterprises, Shenzhen primed to release the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) on its stock exchange. How will the new GEM provide novel opportunities for Chinese enterprises to finance and stabilize their growth and development?

The Chinese Enterprise Panel is expected to address such issues as:

What is the influence of GEM for Chinese enterprises’ long-term development?
What are the qualifications for a growth company to issue shares in GEM?
What is the future development of GEM? And furthermore, what are the prospects of Chinese enterprises as a whole?

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Education Panel

Improving the Quality of 21st Century Education

The developments of the past two decades have changed China’s economic, social, and ideological landscape. In the face of change, China has finally realized that traditional curriculum which focused on transmitting the culture of its ancestors is insufficient to preparing its youth to become 21st century citizens. Hence China has undertaken nationwide educational reforms focusing on fostering innovation and the development of problem-solving and critical thinking skills among the young generation.

The Education Panel will include an informed and insightful discussion among entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners. With expertise, passion, and experience in the field of international education in general—and Chinese education in particular— they will provide views on opportunities and challenges of developing education in China during this new era of globalization.

The Education Panel will discuss the following key issues:

How to prepare the next generation of problem-solvers and critical thinkers in China to meet the opportunities and challenges in the 21st century, which is characterized by exploding information and knowledge; uncertain and rapid change; and global development?
How to develop and expand educational programs focused on Chinese language, history, economy, and philosophy, among other fields, to help the world better understand China?
How to improve educational quality and equity in China by introducing advanced educational theories and practices to educators in China and enhancing inter-cultural dialogues among professionals from different countries through networked technologies?

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Renewable Energy Panel

Energy Demand and the Role of Renewable Sources

Over the past two decades, China has undergone an amazing period of economic growth that has transformed its society. To maintain this dynamic boom, China faces an imposing energy challenge that has both domestic and global implications in terms of resources and environmental consequences.

China is now the world’s second-largest energy consumer and may soon become the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions. To moderate these trends new policies are being implemented to encourage the development of cleaner, renewable energy sources, but how significant can those contributions be.

The Energy Panel will discuss the following key issues:

China’s energy demand within the context of global energy concerns.
The sources of energy demand in China and the energy supply system
Prospects for reducing consumption
The role of renewable energy in China’s energy future
The benefits and challenges from hydro power
The expanding role of wind energy in China

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Sino-Europe Relations Panel

A Tale of Two Worlds

The European Union spans an area of 1,669,807 square miles and comprises approximately 500 million citizens. It is an economic powerhouse with a nominal GDP of $16.6 trillion, contributing more than 30 percent of the global GDP. Recently, the European Union replaced the US as China’s largest export market. In 2007, Chinese exports to the European Union grew by 29.2 percent.

After years of negotiations between the member states of the European Union, the Treaty of Lisbon was finalized in October 2007. It will come into force in 2009, making the European Union an even more coherent political and economic player. This panel will contemplate the opportunities for trade and cultural exchange between China and the European Union.

The panel will address the following topics:

How do macroeconomic indicators differ between China and the European Union?
What is the difference between Chinese and European financial markets?
How can China attract European investments?
How can Chinese companies enter the European market successfully?

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Healthcare Panel

Developing China's National Healthcare Infrastructure

China has been undergoing a series of healthcare reforms in recent years, and healthcare in China has caught the attention of both domestic authorities and foreign investors. This panel aims to allow people to share their views on healthcare in China’s current state and its long-term outlook. With experts from various fields within healthcare, we hope this panel can enhance their understanding of each other’s role in the system and provide a more complete view of healthcare in China.

Topics will include:

China’s achievements in healthcare reform: China has undeniably made great advancement in providing healthcare in the past thirty years. However, reform and improvement to the healthcare system has met many obstacles, where does the resistance lie and how might it be tackled?
China’s healthcare industry in urban areas, the story of private hospitals: With the advent of an increasingly prosperous middle class, people in urban areas are demonstrating a strong demand for increasingly advanced healthcare services. How can foreign investors participate in this opportunity?
China’s healthcare industry in rural areas: what the government and the investors can do to help provide “Medicare” to less provided for rural regions?

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Investment Panel

Opportunities and Challenges: an Exciting New Chapter

2007 was not only another year of rapid GDP growth for China, but a year that allowed the country to shock the world with its substantial transformations in the global investment environment. China made a strong footprint in the 2007 foreign exchange market as the RMB, the official currency of the People's Republic of China, appreciated to below 7.4 (for U.S. dollars) by December 2007, reaching a 12 year high. In bringing Alibaba.com, Fosun and PetroChina public, China also generated the largest multi-billion dollar IPOs to the world’s investors. 2007 was also a year China demonstrated newfound commitment to internationalize its financial system, including the formation of China Investment Corporation (CIC). Since its establishment, CIC has participated in several large-scale deals, including investing in the Blackstone Group and Morgan Stanley, and saw reverse investment by foreign Private Equity firms such as Blackstone and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR).

Yet despite China’s growing liquidity, its investment environment has not fully decoupled from the global markets. How will China’s speculative valuations weather the current sub-prime climate and US economic slowdown?

The Investment Panel will address such key issues as:

How will the credit crunch in the U.S. affect China’s investment environment?
Are the high valuations on the Chinese stock market accurate reflections of China’s economic development or is it a mirage/bubble that will eventually collapse?
What are the potential investment opportunities for private equity firms in China? For China to boost its financial development, what type of private equity firms does China most need? Foreign private equity? Domestic private equity? Or both?
What will be the impact of Chinese financial institutions investing overseas?

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Law Panel

China Update 2008: China's Emerging and Evolving Laws

Confidence in a society relies heavily on the stability and predictability of its legal system as well as its capacity to pass new legislations to address changed circumstances. As it draws the world's attention by its rapid GDP growth, China has produced massive new laws that have triggered heated discussions domestically as well as in the international community.

In 2007 alone, China enacted several major new laws that would significantly impact which industries foreign investment is allowed to enter into, how much tax a company should pay to the central and local governments, and how a company should hire or fire an employee. Have these new laws impaired the stability and predictability of the Chinese legal system? Or are they necessary to fill the gap within the existing legal framework to ensure China's rapid economic development?

The Law Panel will discuss the following issues:

While boasting several multi-billion dollar IPOs in 2007, how has China strengthened its capital market rules? Our speakers will provide an overview of the latest legal developments in the areas of capital markets, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, venture capital and real estate.
At the end of 2007, the central government promulgated the new Foreign Investment Industrial Guidance Catalogue, which dramatically changes the way industries are categorized as "encouraged," "restricted," or "prohibited" for foreign investment. Our speakers will discuss the policies underlying these changes, their impacts on the flow of foreign investment and strategies for foreign investors.
Following its recent debut, China's domestic private equity industry is now directly competing with the leading international private equity firms who have dominated the industry in China. Our speakers will address the impacts of the latest legal developments on the investment community and analyze different structuring alternatives.
China's outbound investments increasingly make headlines. Our speakers will discuss the challenges and strategies for Chinese companies that are in the process of going global.

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Sports Panel

Post-2008: A Bigger Game?

Since China was awarded the 2008 Summer Games in 2001, the sports industry in China has boomed in anticipation of the Beijing Olympic Games. China’s sports infrastructure has since matured from the stimuli of both competition and commercial development. In light of the attention that Olympics and China are accumulating, many foreign leagues and sponsors are also looking at the post-2008 period to improve the marketplace positioning of their entities.

As we contemplate post-Olympics prospects, we plan to explore the vast challenges and opportunities that post-2008 China represents to the global sports industry and shed light on how to forge a greater opportunity for the business of sports in China after the Olympics.

As the one of the largest in the world, how does the sports industry capitalize on the gigantic 1.3 billion "crowd"? In a heavily culture-based business, how can the western sports industry crack the antiquated Chinese cultural nut? Furthermore, with the platform built by massive investments (16 billion USD) for the Beijing 2008 Olympics, how will multi-national corporations seize opportunities to maximize their own brand value? What are the comparative advantages of domestic enterprises to compete with their foreign counterparts on this very same race track for not only an optimum share but a golden opportunity to gain global attention? How will the government cope with the challenges for fiscal policy and the use of Olympics facilities after 2008?

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Venture Capital/Entrepreneurship Panel

China: Limitless Opportunities for Entrepreneurs

Enthusiasm for entrepreneurship in China has grown tremendously in recent decades. Part of this growth is due to increasing government support and the other is accredited to past successes of exemplary entrepreneurs. According to the 2007 Hurun Report, there are now 106 billionaires (in terms of U.S. dollars) in China, with many self-made entrepreneurs at the top of the list. The new report shows an increase of 89 new billionaires from the previous year, an increase that can largely be attributed to the success of these entrepreneurs.

The rise of entrepreneurship in China means that the venture capital industry is exploding with activity. Although there are more established resources for entrepreneurs, there is also more competition for these resources.

The Venture Capital/Entrepreneurship Panel will address the following key issues:

How are the entrepreneurial and venture capital environments changing with massive increases in the number of startups?
What are the initial barriers and challenges for starting a company in China?
How do startups effectively recruit and maintain talent?
Are entrepreneurs and venture capitalists thinking about expanding startup companies to the global market? If so, what are the internationalization strategies that are currently being considered?
What will be some potential new challenges for new and old entrepreneurs in the next ten years?

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