By He Yin, People’s Daily
The 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, also known as the Summer Davos, recently opened in north China’s Tianjin municipality, where participants jointly discussed the prospects of the world economy and explored the way of recovery.
Participants from all over the world gave high recognition of the global significance of China’s economic recovery and development, saying that the country is a huge and crucial market.
According to attendees, China, as the world’s second-largest economy, is essential to not only global trade and economic patterns, but also the accelerated recovery of the world economy. They believe that China’s economy will achieve higher-level growth driven by innovation.
Over the past few years, the world has been facing drastic changes and a pandemic both unseen in a century. Unilateralism, protectionism and de-globalization are on the rise. Global challenges are escalating, and regional conflicts keep flaring up.
As a result, the world needs more stability and certainty, and the aspiration for win-win cooperation of most countries has become stronger.
This year’s Summer Davos was back offline since COVID-19 struck over three years ago. The size and the number of participants in the event have basically recovered to its pre-pandemic levels.
Photo taken on June 25, 2023 shows super-large container ships at a container terminal of Shanghai Yangshan Deep Water Port in east China’s Shanghai. (Photo by Ji Haixin/People’s Daily Online)
Political dignitaries and entrepreneurs from multiple countries gathered in Tianjin for face-to-face exchanges, sending a positive signal to the world to strengthen international cooperation.
“Where there’s more uncertainty, where there’s a greater drive towards security and resilience, it can encourage countries to look inwards, but actually, looking outwards is how they are going to solve those problems,” said Chris Hipkins, Prime Minister of New Zealand.
The whole world needs to work together to solve global challenges, including climate change, he added.
Klaus Schwab, chairperson of the World Economic Forum, noted that he’s always been optimistic about the Chinese economy, saying China has maintained rapid economic growth over the past more than 30 years and still remains one of the important engines driving the global economy today.
His remarks mirrored China’s role as a “ballast stone” and source of power for promoting international free trade and stabilizing global economic growth over the years.
In the past decade, China’s economic growth averaged 6.2 percent annually, and the country’s share of global economic output grew from 11.3 percent in 2012 to around 18 percent in 2022. It has ranked first in the world in terms of trade in goods for six consecutive years, and its average contribution to global economic growth exceeded 30 percent.
China has faithfully fulfilled its WTO accession commitments by opening up its market to the rest of the world and sharing its development opportunities with all. China’s development has improved the lives of the Chinese people, and provided other countries with enormous opportunities.
Citizens dance with a robot at the 2023 Global AI Product and Application Expo in Suzhou, east China’s Jiangsu province, June 25, 2023. (Photo by Hua Xuegen/People’s Daily)
China’s climate financing, its new blueprint of building a digital China, and the Belt and Road Initiative were hot topics of this year’s Summer Davos. It is widely believed that China will continue injecting important impetus into global development.
China will fully and faithfully apply the new development philosophy on all fronts, move faster to create a new pattern of development, and promote high-quality development.
It will introduce more practical and effective measures to expand the potential of domestic demand, stimulate market vitality, promote the coordinated development of urban and rural areas, accelerate the green transition and advance high-standard opening up. This will increase the market size and create cooperation opportunities.
Themed “Entrepreneurship: The Driving Force of the Global Economy,” this year’s Summer Davos has a strong realistic reference. In the era of uncertainty, entrepreneurs, with their keen grasp of the market, can bring greater certainty to the world with their initiatives and actions.
This year, U.S. carmaker Tesla announced that it will build a new mega factory in Shanghai, which will be dedicated to manufacturing the company’s energy-storage product Megapack.
European aircraft manufacturer Airbus plans to build its second production line at its site in Tianjin.
Multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company AstraZeneca signed a deal to invest $450 million in building a production and supply factory in Qingdao, east China’s Shandong province.
While the world is seeing emerging trends of anti-globalization, decoupling and severing supply chains, and “de-risking,” a number of foreign-funded enterprises are expanding their investment and building new projects in China, and executives of foreign enterprises have paid frequent visits to China. Such keen vision, relentless pursuit and extraordinary execution exactly demonstrate the true entrepreneurial spirit.
Relevant parties shall actively foster and carry forward the entrepreneurial spirit, get a clear understanding of the trend of global economic development and take concrete actions to deepen cooperation, The world should show firm support for economic globalization, market economy and free trade, so as to steer the world economy toward a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future.
The world economy has developed through globalization. Mutual collaboration and complementarity among countries is an objective requirement of productivity development and an irreversible historical trend.
As a responsible major country, China will keep building platforms for win-win cooperation and constantly creating new opportunities for the rest of the world with its own development, driving economic recovery and growth.
