China’s booming Shandong province will be the subject of the next webinar being organised by the Bristol and West of England China Bureau.

Having focused on the Greater Bay Area - which takes in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao - in its last online session, the bureau has set out a year-long programme of online events, co-ordinated and hosted by Hewlett Rand, a long-term member of the China Bureau.

Its next webinar will focus further north on the Shandong province, which has a population of 100 million and has China’s third largest economy, a coastal province located between Shanghai and Beijing.

The webinar will take place at 9am-11am (GMT) on Thursday, 15th April, and will focus on the “pharmaceutical valley” - the fast-growing medical and healthcare sectors in and around Jinan, the provincial capital.

In 2018 the China Bureau received delegations from Shandong in both Bristol and Bath which helped lay the foundations for a deal which saw a major UK manufacturer open a factory in Shandong.

Cheltenham-based Versarien plc signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Jinan High Tech Financial Investment Fund for a joint venture to manufacture the UK company’s graphene products in the Jinan Innovation Zone. Graphene is a cutting-edge engineering material, lightweight, thin, flexible, conductive and incredibly lightweight. It is used in electrical and photonics circuits.

The China Bureau also has a friendship agreement with Qinzhou in Shandong Province and was instrumental in Shandong Qingneng Power Co. Ltd. developing a relationship with Brush Electrical Machines in the same year. 

The Shandong webinar will be followed a focus on the emerging partnerships between Bristol and China in fintech in May, and later in the year a second webinar on the huge new “free port” development on the island of Hainan.

The Hainan Free Trade Port, officially launched earlier this year, will be a low tax, zero tariff zone providing tax incentives for overseas direct investment. The project aims to turn Hainan, which is off the southern coast of China, into a major global free trade port by 2050.

Richard Lowe, director of business initiatives at the Bristol and West of England China Bureau, said: “Our April webinar will be an opportunity to learn more about a province that perhaps has a slightly lower profile in the UK than others, but which nonetheless has huge potential for our businesses, as we have already seen with Versarien.

“Following our fintech and Hainan webinars we also hope to mark the 20th anniversary of Bristol’s partnership with Guangzhou by holding further online events towards the end of the year.

“As the world recovers from the pandemic, we will begin to make plans for another China Trade Mission, for those that might be interested in joining us.” For further details contact richard@chinabureau.co.uk