POLITICAL SPEAK: Mr Forbes gave a talk here on US election politics and its impact on Asia. -- ST PHOTO: CHEW SENG KIM

The 60-year-old president and CEO of Forbes Inc and editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine told The Straits Times: 'China should visibly do more to fight counterfeiting, protect property rights and remove other trade barriers.'

These barriers included its provincial and local governments that sometimes thwarted or ignored trade-friendly policies.

He said this after his talk on US election politics and its impact on Asia to a record turnout of about 250 Singapore Press Club members at the Raffles Hotel yesterday.

As for India, he said: 'To be blunt, it should do more to get the Doha Round going again, along with Brazil, so we can try to salvage that.'

The six-year-old global trade talks have stalled largely because India and Brazil will not jeopardise their peoples' livelihoods by bringing down trade barriers.

Mr Forbes stressed that the more barriers the Asian titans removed, the stronger their political capital would be to fend off 'truly destructive measures by protectionists'.

The eldest son of the late billionaire bon vivant Malcolm Forbes, Mr Forbes and his brothers Robert and Christopher arrived here yesterday for the three-day Forbes Global CEO Conference, which kicks off its seventh, and best-attended, year today.

Mr Forbes, himself a Republican presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000, said that should Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton win, she will become president amid stronger anti-free-trade sentiment than when her husband Bill Clinton held power.

That is because the famously anti-free-trade Democrats currently control both Houses of Congress.

That said, Mr Forbes thought next year's tussle for the presidency would be between Mrs Clinton and Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani.

Mr Forbes' money is on former New York mayor Giuliani, who he said was 'no cuddly bear' but a whiz at cutting taxes, creating jobs and cutting crime rates to all-time lows. Plus, he was quick to add, Mr Giuliani is a firm 'free trader'.

Known for his spot-on economic predictions, Mr Forbes said that despite a productivity boom, the US would grow slower in the next 12 months because of the sub-prime fiasco, and Asia would catch its cold, but not disastrously like its 1997 crisis.

Stressing that the US central bank, the Federal Reserve System, had to act fast to calm rising panic, he said: 'Rumours are that people are just holding up, and when you hold up, the system freezes because you need a free flow of credit (for growth).'