Antonio Miguel Carmona is a professor of economics and a business manager. He has been deputy director of Marketing at Grupo 16, until being vice president of the energy giant Iberdrola Spain, where he refounded the Communication and Corporate department with great success, as reported in all the media. He has worked for different multinationals and has even been a director of an important financial institution. He is now part of the board of directors of companies in which Abu Dhabi participates, as well as different multinationals. He lives in Luxembourg where he receives us. We called him after reading an interview of his in China Today.

• Q: How does it feel to be the only Spanish economist interviewed by China Today, as the renowned magazine today points out?
• AMC: Nothing special. It is one of the best magazines in Asia.

Carmona stares at us and freezes the sentence. He doesn't give it importance. But his speech to the Chinese authorities has reached the highest levels by proposing to open the doors and eliminate prejudices with China. A Shanghai newspaper has dedicated a double page to him.

• Q: Is there any danger in sight to proposing a new international institutional framework?
• AMC: The first thing there is a substantial change in the global balance, especially the emergence of China as an economic power, globalization and a new de facto economic order. Anyone who has not yet heard about it does not know that we need new international economic institutions where all nations participate. It's a drawer.
• Q: And what is the danger?
• AMC: A world in which a large current surplus in China coexists, along with oceans of especially Western debt that turns currencies into wet paper and a dollar that no longer only depends on the Federal Reserve. It is the best combination for us to have a good monetary crisis.
• Q: You have proposed a Bretton Woods II to the Chinese authorities. Precisely the Bretton Woods Conference was held between July 1 and 22, 1944 to coordinate the monetary and financial policy of 44 allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel in the town of Bretton Woods in New Hampshire with the active presence of famous economists such as John Maynard Keynes on the British side and Harry Dexter White on the American side. From the conference, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the economic institutional framework that has lasted until today were born. Do you think a monetary crisis could occur?
• AMC: The wave is very big. We have time to remedy it. We must coordinate our currencies. It is the most urgent thing. That's why I said Bretton Woods II.

The world's financial institutions have been left with their eyes open like that shepherd who was surprised to see the train passing by for the first time. It is the train of global economic integration and the confluence between central banks.

• Q: Why is it urgent?
• AMC: Because what is least convenient for us is polarization. On the one hand, the dollar area and on the other the BRICS area -Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa-, betting on another currency, with the euro as the European currency. It is a polarization that must be avoided. It is necessary to sit down and reach agreements and seek a more cooperative world, especially in monetary policy.
• Q: Is China a threat?
• AMC: China is an opportunity. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know China. Europe must commit to opening up to the world, especially with China. Trade, generate added value and employment. I believe in free trade. They try to instill fear in us to protect particular interests.
• Q: In relation to your radical commitment to free trade, Chinese politicians were surprised by your story about the frog and the turtle with which you began your speech in Beijing.
• AMC: It is a Chinese fable whose moral is that it is preferable to live in a wide ocean like a sea turtle than in a pond like a toad. The world is full of opportunities, business possibilities, opportunities to make money. More Marco Polo and less Donald Trump.
• Q: And how is that realized?
• AMC: The European Parliament has to ratify the agreement signed two years ago between the European Union and China for mutual investments and sharing benefits that involved eight years of negotiations and 14,000 pages that specify each step. Why is it not ratified? Don't we want to generate more income for Europe? Do they want Europe to be just a museum?
• Q: At the table at the opening dinner of the Digital Economy Universal Exhibition in China there were approximately twenty-five people: the CEO of Huawei, the vice president of Tesla, the president of China Tower, among others, and you. Is China ahead in technological innovations?
• AMC: They are taking advantage of new technological paradigms and trajectories better than anyone else. They work and innovate. They are nowlargely a modern country, technologically very advanced, whose development has put an end to extreme poverty. We must learn from them. I have an intense relationship with the heads of large Chinese companies and they want to have a balanced relationship with European and Spanish companies.
• Q: You have become, they say, the great link between universities and companies, Chinese and European.
• AMC: Agreements between universities are as important, or more, than agreements between companies.