B.C. aspires to trade Chinese currency…(Runnin’ From The Dollar!!)
News.ca.msn.com
Mon, 14 Jul 2014
VANCOUVER – In a bid to lure more Chinese investment into the province, British Columbia Premier Christy Clark has billed Vancouver “the most Asian city outside of Asia.”
Clark told an elite trade delegation Monday that the province is ramping up efforts to make trade deals with Asian nations, in part by charting a route to build the first international trading centre for the Chinese currency.
“Most of the world thinks of Asia still, or calls Asia the Far East. We call Asia the West,” she told about 80 senior business executives with the APEC China Business Council to Canada, which represents some of the largest private and state-owned enterprises in China.
In fact, Clark told the invite-only forum her staff reoriented a massive map outside her Vancouver office, and now one side shows western Canada, while the other side displays eastern Asia.
“Which is now, we believe, the centre of the world,” she said. “The decision to build relationships was eminently obvious for us.”
The goal is to establish Vancouver as the first offshore settlement centre for the Chinese currency renminbi — also known as RMB or yuan — in North America, Clark said. The government also wants to persuade five Asian head offices to set up in B.C. from any business sector by 2020, which would be aided by the currency arrangement.
Fifteen global investors are already doing big business in B.C., and the government will introduce legislation in the fall to help convince new, major investors from China to come on the board, Clark added. She outlined a list of reasons why the room should view B.C. as a safe harbour for investment, explaining the government looked to Asia after its biggest trade partner in the U.S. reeled during the economic crisis of 2008.
She was asked later about what the government is doing to regulate or vet investors to ensure the money filtering into the province is legitimate.
“We don’t regulate the private sector from that perspective in British Columbia,” she told reporters, “but we regulate to ensure that we are looking after the environmental and social needs of the province.”
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