Forum provides venue for brainstorming

From left: Henry Paulson, former US treasury secretary; Alexei Ge Siji, Johnson & Johnson CEO; Cai Hongbin, dean of Peking University's Guanghua School of Management; Dominic Barton, McKinsey & Co global managing director; and Stephen Roach, researcher at Yale University. More than 600 global business and political leaders participated in the 2013 Fortune Global Forum in Chengdu to discuss issues facing the world. [Photo/Provided to China Daily]

Hundreds of global and business leaders gather in Chengdu

China's new economic stage and its implications for the world was the theme of the discussions during the 2013 Fortune Global Forum held in early June in Chengdu.

Reform, innovation, consumption and technology all became buzzwords among more than 600 global business and political leaders in their three days of intensive brain-storming.

Zhang Gaoli, China's vice-premier, said in a keynote speech that the country is committed to accelerating economic reform, moving faster to a consumer-driven economy and expanding imports, while strongly opposing all forms of protectionism.

"We will accelerate change to the development model and vigorously improve and optimize the economic structure," Zhang said, adding that the country will work to expand consumer demand.

He said China will in the next five years import $10 trillion worth of goods from around the world and invest $500 billion abroad.

Tony Blair, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, said China's crucial role in the global economy is shown in "the interdependence of our economy with that of China, the fact that we now watch anxiously for the latest signs of how China is growing, its management of credit, its purchase of commodities, the development of its labor market, and the presence here of many of the largest companies in the world".

But he also told his Chinese friends that China as a power will be "analyzed differently, questioned differently and engaged with much greater scrutiny, even anxiety, than in the days when it was simply and only a developing nation.

"This scrutiny is the fate of a power. It will mean, for example, that as the world opens up economically to China, as it should do, China is expected to reciprocate," he said.

Henry Paulson, former United States treasury secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO, in his speech highlighted the need for China to reform.

"What hits me right smack between the eyes is the same thing the Chinese government knows. The current growth model is running out of gas. They're going to need to reinvigorate reform, it's clear," he said.

China is "too reliant on State-led investment and infrastructure and manufacturing," Paulson added. "Too reliant on exports. There's not enough domestic-led growth. It needs more from the services industry."

He also suggested that China's local governments should be allowed to issue municipal bonds to fund their projects, instead of relying on land sale revenue.

Cai Hongbin, dean of the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, has noticed a pattern in the way people respond to the stiff challenges facing modern China: "Those who come often to China are pretty optimistic. Those who rarely or never come say China's economy is collapsing."

McKinsey & Co's Global Managing Director Dominic Barton said as China's urbanization progresses, the numbers coming from the countryside may be slowing. But China is still just at "the end of the beginning" of its urban transformation.