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China : Innovation is the soul of nation’s advancement, Zeng |
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2006-9-12
The opening session of the World Economic Forum’s China Business Summit heard how the country must harness its innovative capacity and find new, more efficient and equitable ways to deal with the strains of huge growth.
“In the new development stage, we cannot continue with the traditional development approach and growth pattern,” said Zeng Peiyan, Vice-Premier of the People’s Republic of China, in a special address at the opening of the World Economic Forum’s China Business Summit 2006 in Beijing.
“Innovation,” Zeng said, “is the soul of a nation’s advancement and the everlasting driving power of national prosperity.”
The Summit is the culmination of 25 years of engagement by the Forum in China. Organized in collaboration with the China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) and with the support of the National Development and Reform Commission, its aim is to bring key stakeholders together in Beijing to rethink and reshape the country’s growth and industry agendas.
More than 500 participants from 27 countries are taking part under the theme Sustainable Growth through Innovation: China’s Creative Imperative.
Even if it continues to grow in its present fashion, the risks of these trends would eventually prove overwhelming.
China’s challenge is how to stop having to import such technologies and instead develop them at home. “A significant chunk of the profit has been ceded because we cannot buy core technologies right now,” said Chen Yuan, Governor of the China Development Bank and Co-Chair of the China Business Summit 2006. “We hope to absorb technologies from abroad and adapt them into our own.”
Much will depend on improving educational systems, said Baba N. Kalyani, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharat Forge, India, and Co-Chair of the China Business Summit 2006.
More needs to be done also to help these innovators find the kind of financing they need to bring their ideas to the marketplace.
While financing in China is ample and money plentiful, “how will we make those resources available as venture capital for technological innovation and progress,” asked Chen.
Many of these improvements are already incorporated in the government’s development plans. Growing links between industry and universities, he said, would help stimulate innovation and turn entrepreneurs into the linchpin of a fast-growing technology market. And China will strengthen its legal framework and enforcement of intellectual property rights, he said.
The government plans to invest in a wide range of fields to help China leapfrog existing technologies and become more competitive, from energy, aviation and information technology to biotech, nuclear power and exploration of the moon.
But many of the challenges for China’s government going forward are similar to those that Japanese administrators have faced in the past 20 years, according to Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan – how to govern a rapidly developing nation while remaining transparent and giving citizen’s a meaningful voice in their own government.
“The importance of so-called shared fundamental universal values – democracy, human rights, freedom of speech and the rule of law – should all be enhanced here in China,” he said. |
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