The 12th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, also known as Summer Davos in Asia, was held in North China’s Tianjin from Sept 18 to 20.
Themed as “Shaping Innovative Societies in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, this year’s forum attracted nearly 2,000 business leaders, policymakers and experts from over 80 countries.
Let’s take a look at what leaders said at the economic gala.
China will play a key role shaping a new framework for global cooperation, maintaining open markets, facilitating globalization and improving international integration of governments, business and civil society.
China has a leading role in the global transformation towards new development models characterized by technological innovation and based on intangible and digital assets, said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, in a speech at Nankai University in Tianjin on Tuesday.
The world’s development depends on a global system and more globalization is needed, although it is in a difficult phase because of the possible trade war. Some countries are against globalization but we have to support a more globalized community for cooperation, he added.
Although I decided to retire, I will never leave the company. I will always love Alibaba, which is like my child. I will always be around to support the young generation of leaders as a consultant, but the final decision will be made by the young leaders. I will not come back to make decisions for them. I trust them and I also believe Alibaba’s management system will support them to run the company well.
For the future, we should pay attention to the fourth technological revolution. As this internet technological revolution speeds up, it has greater impact on everyone, in all walks of life. If we don’t handle a technological revolution well, it will turn into a social revolution. This is our responsibility — to get society used to the technological revolution and help children can grasp opportunities and tackle with challenges in the future.
I found the forum a great event to collaborate with innovators, business leaders and government officials outside the direct field that I work in every day.
In the past 40 years, China has made a great contribution to the world not only in terms of knowledge, expertise and skills but also the large market that it represents for companies like mine and others to be able to actually work inside of China.
China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative can build tighter integration between countries in the region in terms of trade and exchange of ideas.
I have a strong belief open borders with respect to both trade and the exchange of ideas is to the benefit of all participants. One of the things the World Economic Forum stands for is finding ways for countries and individuals to work together in common cause to make things better for all of us.
The Chinese economy is developing very fast, and more people from different countries would like to learn Chinese language and culture. Our company’s online Chinese teaching brand Lingobus has over 10,000 users from 73 countries and regions.
Many native English teachers said we are teaching so many smart Chinese students English now, and their children must also learn Chinese so they can have dialogue in the future on an international stage. Many American schools, including elite private schools, also asked us to arrange Chinese teachers to teach their students.
With the rapid development of the Chinese economy, entrepreneurs of our generation and our children will not only shoulder responsibilities to introduce Chinese language and culture to more parts of the world, but also our products and services all around the world to make people’s lives better.
The China-proposed Belt and Initiative is very exciting, it will open up trade routes and benefit all countries involved in the initiative.
I think the more open we are and the more we can work with each other, the greater the opportunities are for everybody. That goes for people, goes for countries and goes for everything.
Free trade is something we should really try and treasure and hold on to. You shouldn’t be looking at countries like America, who lead with a very poor example and have started to close trade down.
Innovation is the key to our company’s development and we have experienced three stages, including follow-up innovation, introducing innovation and self-innovation.
It is not just about product innovation, but also industrial and all-around innovation.
At the very beginning we focused on safety, and now we pay more attention to health, as the incomes of Chinese people have increased and they live longer. Making good use of the advantages in traditional Chinese medicine, we would like to emphasize healthcare function of our products to satisfy consumers’ new demands to pursue a better and healthy life.
The changes happening to China over the past decades are big, impactful and courageous.
When we reviewed the world situation 55 years ago, we thought that Asia, and particularly China, would play a key role for the future and DSM wanted to anticipate that.
China is important for DSM, a company pursuing sustainability, as the country is taking leadership on balancing economic profit, growth and the environment.
