Last night, the Labour peer Lord Meghnad Desai told an audience at the University that China holds the key to whether our economies in the West will have a quick recovery or stagnate for a decade or more.

During a talk at the University, entitled China and the Global Financial Crisis, he addressed how the current economic downturn will affect China politically, China’s role in the global economic recovery, China’s relations with other countries and whether China is set to return to a dominant global position on the world stage. The lecture was hosted by the University's Centre for East Asian Studies and sponsored by the British Government's Department for International Development.

Lord Desai, is one of the world's leading development economists, a member of the House of Lords and a professor emeritus at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he has been director of the Development Studies Institute and was the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance.