Not since Mao Zedong has a Chinese leader amassed as much personal power as Xi Jinping, and not since Deng Xiaoping has a leader moved as definitively to shift China’s course in ways that will, over time, fundamentally transform the world’s new centre of gravity. Having been an observer of China since his Master’s thesis in the early 1970s, Canada’s former Ambassador, and presently a Beijing-based businessman Howard Balloch has a unique perspective on the evolution of modern China. He will discuss both the structural changes now underway and explain his optimism about a sustained and robust economic growth.
Howard Balloch served as Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China from early 1996 through 2001. He founded The Balloch Group in 2001 and grew it into China’s leading boutique investment bank, acquired by Canaccord in January 2011. After serving two years as Canaccord Asia’s Chairman, he left the investment banking industry in early 2013 to focus on private equity investing in pre-IPO entrepreneurial Chinese firms.