Review of Honored Guests of the First Forum

Openness has gone into the lifeblood of many of us, Chinese or China’s partners, corporations or public or independent institutions.

Openness has gone into the lifeblood of many of us, Chinese or China’s partners, corporations or public or independent institutions.

At UNIDO, we will continue to support our member states in their trade and investment-related challenges and I invite all stakeholders present here today to join us. Your knowledge, your experience, your technology and creativity, and your openness and the conducive business environment will be essential for the countries to harness the benefits of the inclusive and sustainable development.

The miracle of the past forty years of China's opening up, rising from an insignificant player to the second largest economy, the largest exporting nation, the second largest importing nation in the world, is a sufficient and ample evidence of the power of trade, and not just in growing national wealth, and the fact that it liberated eight hundred million people out of extreme poverty is a statement of a direction and model of development.

It has been twenty years since then. In these twenty years, China has demonstrated phenomenal capacity to grow a capitalist economy, play by capitalist rules but communism survived and even became stronger.

I agree with the words of wisdom of Lao Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher: “A towering tree grows up from a little sapling; A nine-storey building starts from piles of clay.” In order to promote the Ukraine-China friendship, we shall lay a solid foundation for bilateral relations.

China’s initiatives, such as the first China International Import Expo and the “Belt and Road Initiative”, are an attempt to unite diverse Asian countries, aiming to bring Asia closer to Europe and other countries in the world.

We also strongly praise China's Belt and Road Initiative through which, we can seek new untapped opportunities in trade and tourism with the countries and regions along the belt and road.

I'm always happy to be back in China and think back to my first visit nearly 25 years ago. In those 25 years, China has experienced a remarkable evolution. The expo is just one example of China's role as a global leader. It shows that opening up the Chinese market can bring huge development space to the global economy.

Whether it’s energy health or other areas, I hope that this kind of innovation will provide a model for more international cooperation in the future. Taking the talents, not only of China and the United States but other countries we can build an atmosphere of innovation that improves lives all over the world.

We've seen over the last ten years, despite the many breakthroughs in innovation (including digital technology), aggregate productivity growth has actually slowed down. OECD’s Future of Productivity Report and subsequent analysis examined this trend and found a widening gap between the more productive leading firms and the less productive rest of the firms. This suggests that the main source of the productivity slowdown, is not so much a slowing of innovation by the most globally advance firms, but rather an uneven uptake, an uneven diffusion of innovations, throughout our economies.

Of course, history suggests that the uptake of new technology takes time, but countries need to nurture a dynamic business environment, where firms can take risks and either succeed and grow or fail and exit, hopefully, smoothly and fast. Many countries have recently experienced a decline in business dynamism, as reflected by slower start-up rates, or slower job reallocation rates. The so-called churn is slowing down, and this is occurring across digital but also non-digital sectors alike.

So, we must maintain a global mindset, strive for openness and support multilateral cooperation, to boost innovation, increase trade integration and harness the digital transformation for growth and well-being.

Leveraging on Hong Kong's unique strengths, under “One Country, Two Systems”, while emphasizing on complementarity of the cities, Hong Kong is destined to play an important role in the Bay Area's rise, as Asia's Silicon Valley.

The transformation of new digital technologies, especially the development of artificial intelligence and automation, has brought tremendous changes to enterprises and the labor market.. The transformation includes two aspects: companies need to innovate and at the same time, workers must improve themselves.

At the same time, we formulate new measures to protect the rights of our citizens

First, we need to overcome the digital divide.

Big data actually works for everyone

Narrowing the digital divide means more information, and more information means better and higher quality services will be provided for our people.

This is my second visit to China, and I have witnessed with my own eyes the important economic, social and cultural transformation in China. We, the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, have also set up Task Force China to face the challenges of development together with China. “The Belt and Road Initiative” has also provided a good opportunity to speed up this process.

Ensuring food security is a pressing issue all over the world

Equally important is the development of infrastructure 

“The New Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative” was first proposed by Xi Jinping, President of the people's Republic of China during his visit to the Nazarbayev University in Astana in September 2013. In the same year, Nazarbayev, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan launched the “Bright Road” infrastructure development program, which focuses on the development of transportation infrastructure to help improve international trade

While the digital age has seen the birth of new tech giants and unicorns, it has more importantly opened the doors of the world to millions of small, even micro enterprises.

Similarly, in a marketplace which has become less dependent on the choice of location, thanks to technology. Smaller countries have found more space to operate in, with nimbleness being the main driver of their competitiveness.

AI poses great challenges, and they should not be forced or soiled to one corporation, one country, or one continent alone. I like to think that such a major change for humankind should be governed by institution that transcends national barriers

All innovation has given rise to an increasingly open and interconnected world that ultimately reaches the level of globalization we face today.

There are many opportunities ahead of us within the framework of “The Belt and Road Initiative”, especially in its China +16 format.

The overarching theme of our cooperation is connectivity, which is intrinsically linked with, and reinforced by trade and innovation.

We will actively promote advanced technologies and develop the global information and communication space, rapidly and steadily change the world's development process, and promote the development of new cooperation models at the continents, regions, countries and business levels. Practice has proved that these previous models are low efficient. And therefore, we must focus on constructive and pragmatic cooperation.

“The Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative” put forward by Chinese leaders is of great significance. We were among the first countries to support this initiative and have made our own contributions.

Today's forum is very meaningful because besides being an opportunity for business investors and policy makers to exchange ideas on the direction of trade and economic development, today's event also has two important aspects. One, symbolic aspect. Two, strategic aspect.

Firstly, the symbolic importance is not only for China or Asia, but also for the international community. I say this because our geo-economic condition is edging closer towards uncertainties.

We have seen that China is determined to create a balance amidst global challenges caused by turbulence. This is even more evident with President Xi Jinping’s announcement of “The Belt and Road Initiative” which has met success by leap and bounds. Every project under this initiative has made a lot of success. CIIE is a global event with international interests and it is also a tangible outcome of “The Belt and Road” Forum in 2017

I, therefore, welcome the intention that China has displayed by making imports the central theme of this CIIE.

In this context, I hope that the ongoing negotiations between EU and China, on the comprehensive agreement on investment, will come to a successful conclusion soon. It will certainly lead to even stronger trade and investment ties between our two nations.

We believe CIIE will serve as a powerful tool for trade facilitation which will automatically result in an increased global trade.

Today, we gather in Shanghai for a common goal. We are ready to promote dialogue and cooperation among different continents, countries and enterprises.

We share a common belief that greater economic openness is the key to generating economic vitality, creating job opportunities and reducing poverty.

We firmly believe that true openness to trade and investment is indispensable for global growth. Let us work together to protect and expand the open global economy.