President Higgins’s visit ensures access for Irish companies

One of the highlights of President Michael D Higgins's state visit to China last week was a visit to the Alibaba headquarters, where he met the ecommerce company's founder and executive chairman, Jack Ma.

The campus is a vast area – the lobby of the building has an orange Lamborghini replica, built entirely from parts bought on Taobao, the company's online retail unit. The Irish visit took place on the day that Ma was named Asia's richest man, something that seemed not to faze him as he watched the Irish dancing performance, as well as a display of his beloved tai chi martial arts, sitting beside the President.

Ma was just one of star names that the President during his trip to China; he also had meetings with President Xi Jinping, premier Li Keqiang and the revolving chief executive of the telecoms giant, Huawei Guo Ping.

The calibre of meetings shows how Ireland’s ambitions for its links to China are very high.

“There are companies already doing business in partnership, but also others that are interested in expanding from some branch of activity into another, and that’s all very positive,” President Higgins said.

Alibaba’s record-breaking share listing on September 19th valued the company at an estimated €20 billion with a market value of roughly €185 billion; getting access to Huawei, which already has a presence in Ireland, could be expected to act as a reminder that there is room to expand in Ireland.

Meeting Ma was a coup that the IDA will no doubt be hoping to translate into the ecommerce giant setting up in Ireland. "Alibaba is a very large company, it had the largest IPO in the world, and it's entirely appropriate that the President would meet such a company, but I wouldn't read any significance at this point," said Martin Shanahan, chief executive of IDA Ireland.

“We have a strong record in helping companies to internationalise beyond their home bases,” Shanahan added. “We’ve obviously done that well with US companies and we believe we can do the same for Chinese companies.”

Because the visit was a formal state visit, the profile was high and this allowed the Irish delegation high levels of access. “They are anxious to pursue these matters, and this is one of the great benefits of speaking at a head-of-state level,” President Higgins said.

Shanahan said the fact that Ireland was the only English-speaking country in the euro zone is attractive to the Chinese. “They are very interested in the skills base and they are interested in innovation, so we point to these. There are other attractions – they are interested in the quality of the environment,” he added.

Another aim of the trip was to build on the success of Xi Jinping’s visit to Ireland in 2012, when he was still vice president, and the President said he had invited Mr Xi to make a return visit to Ireland, which the Chinese leader had accepted. He also invited Premier Li, who is in charge of economic matters on the standing committee of the Politburo, the most powerful group of leaders in China.

The strength of China’s economic growth made it attractive as a partner for Ireland, the President said. “It’s very interesting when the international press regards it as a crisis that China’s growth moves from 7.5 per cent to 7 per cent. I think many countries in Europe would be very pleased to be dealing with such a modest adjustment in growth.”