Hoping to ink new deals in Asia: Clark
Posted October 30, 2011 8:15 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) Our premier says her upcoming trade junket to Asia will walk a fine balance between business and cultural concerns. Christy Clark jets off to China and India next Friday.
“It’s the broadest representation of the business community we’ve ever taken to Asia,” she says.
Clark is arriving in China to a government notoriously thin-skinned when it comes to criticism, but she says the cultural and business concerns are one and the same there.
“Obviously we have to be careful and very respectful when we’re there. But think of it this way. In British Columbia five years ago, the government made a huge effort to go out and sell BC wood to China. [They] brought the industry together, did a trade mission [and] at the political end, sold wood really hard.”
Clark says it worked and now in some months BC’s softwood exports to China are higher than our shipments to the US. “As anybody who has been to Asia knows, relationships really matter, and government opens doors for the private sector in a way that it doesn’t in this country.”
Clark notes the 250 or so groups going on the trip are paying their own way.
