(Bloomberg) — Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson called for better relations with China and Bill Gates said Covid-19 deaths and infection rates may drop below those caused by seasonal flu next year, on the second day of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.
Paulson’s remarks show the intense focus on China-U.S. ties at the forum, which started Wednesday with a pledge by Vice President Wang Qishan to continue to open the economy and saw U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo criticize China over trade. Many in the U.S. see Beijing as “a serious problem” while many Chinese believe Americans want to “stop their emergence,” Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in an interview.
Today has seen Mastercard Inc. address reports of a new partnership with Amazon.com Inc., Bill Gates speak on the lessons of the pandemic, and HSBC Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn say why he won’t visit Hong Kong. Other speakers include top executives from Bayer AG and Cargill, and the chairman of property developer China Vanke, with panels on everything from health and climate change to the threat from fake news.
Soaring Food Costs Are Warning to the World (12:10 p.m. H.K.)
Soaring food costs and unprecedented shocks in the global supply chain show the world must focus on building more resilient food systems, Gro Intelligence chief executive officer Sara Menker told Bloomberg Television in an interview at the forum.
The inextricable relationship between agriculture and climate change — recently spotlighted at COP26 — too often focuses on the sector’s carbon emissions, not on vulnerabilities in the food chain that will be most exposed to global warming, she said. As climate change hits agriculture, countries are responding to scarcities by enforcing export curbs, restricting access for net-importing countries.
“Hunger, to me, is ultimately a political will issue. And it is a global political will issue,” Menker said. “I don’t think it’s a question of whether the world can feed itself — it’s whether we have a system that can function appropriately for food to move from point A to point B.”
In a panel at the forum, she said more funds are needed for farmers to grow more with less land. “This change is going to require lots and lots of capital, and lots of long-term capital. Agriculture capital today is too short term,” she said. “And you have to price the risk associated with the capital that gets deployed.”
Pandemic Testing Limits of Regulators (noon H.K.)
Roche Pharmaceuticals CEO Bill Anderson said the pace of approvals for Covid-19 diagnostic tests has been limited by the large number of applicants relative to staff qualified to review them.
“I think the pandemic has tested the limits of the regulatory bodies who approve things because of just the number of things that have been coming at them,” Anderson said at the forum when asked why it was so difficult to get rapid Covid-19 diagnostic tests in the U.S. as compared to Europe.
Senator Pushes Australia to Support Journalism (11:55 a.m.)
Australian Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said in a panel that her country has “one of the least diverse media landscapes in the world” due to the dominance of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. “As a result of that, a big part of the population don’t trust what is printed in the daily newspapers.”
She called for investment in public-interest journalism. “Just as an individual politician, I’d prefer people believed and had trust in the media that they consume so they when they see something that is written about what I do and what I say, they can say, ‘Alright, that must be happening, or that’s good.’”
On the same panel, Li Xin, vice president of Beijing-based Caixin Media, said media outlets should use social media platforms more to get their messages out. She added that when people paid for subscriptions to news organizations they showed trust, and that Caixin has “more than 700,000 people trusting us.”
China Tech Stocks Set to Recover (11:50 a.m. H.K.)
While China’s internet giants have taken a beating this year, the digitalization of the world’s second-largest economy means these companies will stay industry leaders in the “long-term,” according to Franklin Templeton Investments.
“You might have to wait a while for them to recover, but all those names are very powerful for China and will continue to be,” Manraj Sekhon, chief investment officer for emerging markets equities at the asset manager, said in a television interview at the forum.
Gates Says Covid Deaths to Decline (10:40 a.m. H.K.)
Covid deaths and infection rates may dip below seasonal flu levels by the middle of next year, as long as new dangerous variants don’t emerge in the meantime, Bill Gates said.
Between natural and vaccine immunity and emerging oral treatments, “the death rate and the disease rate ought to be coming down pretty dramatically,” he said. “The vaccines are very good news, and the supply constraints will be largely solved as we get out in the middle of next year, and so we’ll be limited by the logistics and the demand.”
HSBC Backs Hong Kong Opening Plan (10:20 a.m. H.K.)
HSBC CEO Quinn said he currently has no plans to visit Hong Kong, which has a strict but widely criticized quarantine policy, defending the city’s efforts to focus its post-pandemic reopening on China.
“It’s important for Hong Kong to establish what they need to establish with China on reopening,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “I don’t want to do anything that may jeopardize that. I would love to get back to Hong Kong as soon as I can, and when the authorities feel it’s right for me to go back, I will.”
HSBC was founded in Hong Kong and Shanghai in the 19th century, and Quinn’s decision to refrain from another visit comes even as his counterpart at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Jamie Dimon, touched down in Hong Kong this week after getting a quarantine exemption. Quinn said he visited Hong Kong late last year, spending two weeks in quarantine.
Mastercard to Build Amazon Links (9:50 a.m. H.K.)
Mastercard Inc. will continue to develop its relationship with Amazon, vice chairman and president of strategic growth Michael Froman said in a television interview at the forum.
Bloomberg reported earlier that Amazon may shift its popular co-brand credit card to Mastercard amid simmering tensions with Visa Inc., a feud that already prompted the retailer to ban the cards in the U.K. starting next year.
“We’ve had a long-standing, good relationship with Amazon,” Froman said. “I’ve nothing to comment on the particular conversations going on right now.”
Paulson Urges Yellen to Maintain China Dialogue (8:55 a.m. H.K.)
The U.S. and Chinese economies need mechanisms to avoid even a partial decoupling that would lead to a crisis, Paulson said, adding the world is headed for a “very dangerous place” if Washington and Beijing are unable to stabilize their relationship.
“Wholesale financial decoupling is impossible, and partial decoupling is likely to make the United States, China and the world more susceptible to financial crises,” he said.
“We need my friend and successor, Secretary Janet Yellen, to continue her communication with Vice Premier Liu He aimed toward transparency, greater harmonization, and coordination of financial regulations and accounting principles.”
Singapore Says Taiwan Bid Complicated (8:20 a.m. H.K.)
Taiwan’s bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP, would be welcomed in the same way as any economy’s that is willing to meet standards, but there are clearly political complications, Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said in a Bloomberg Television interview at the forum.
China claims that the democratic, self-governing island is part of its territory.
Singapore’s Lee Warns of War Risks in Taiwan (8 a.m. H.K.)
Tensions over Taiwan risk leading to a miscalculation between the U.S. and China as both nations step up activity around the island, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said late Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait.
“We should be concerned,” Lee said. “I don’t think it’s going to war overnight, but it is in a situation where you can have a mishap or a miscalculation and be in a very delicate situation.”
Track the Bloomberg New Economy Forum (7:30 a.m. H.K.)
Today’s forum started at 8:30 a.m. Singapore (7:30 p.m. New York), and speeches and panels are broadcast live. You can sign up for our New Economy Daily newsletter here. The New Economy Forum is being organized by Bloomberg Media Group, a division of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
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