China offers unique path of growth, says expert

China's development model offers an alternative path for emerging economies and contributes to global collaboration, said Jeremy Jurgens, managing director of the World Economic Forum, at its annual meeting on Monday in Davos, Switzerland.

Over the past decade, China has achieved impressive progress in frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and synthetic biology, as well as green technologies, including renewable energy, battery storage and electric vehicles, Jurgens said.

"In almost every one of these areas, China or the United States is in the number one or two position," he said, crediting China's achievements to its strong talent base and forward-looking policies, including its focus on fostering new quality productive forces and the AI Plus initiative.

Many of these advancements benefit not only China but also the world by helping address the challenge of decarbonization, he added.

"China has played a very constructive and productive role in the global system, and a lot of countries look to China to take an active role there," he said, adding that leading Chinese companies and government delegations are joining the forum to share their insights.

"They will be able to participate in discussions with their peers, whether at the business level, (among) academics (or with) government leaders, and have an informal exchange on future areas of potential cooperation," he said.

This kind of dialogue contributes to the forum's discussion of collaboration in the intelligent age, he said.

Regarding geopolitical tensions that hinder global collaboration, Jurgens expressed his hope for a "healthy global ecosystem" that enables collaboration on climate change, alignment of trade policy and governance of emerging technologies.

Having worked in China for three years and attended the annual "Summer Davos" in Tianjin and Dalian, Jurgens visited more than 50 cities and hundreds of leading companies in the country. He said he noticed significant developments in China's infrastructure and improvements in the quality of tools and capabilities of its manufacturing sector.

As the world's second-largest economy, Jurgens said, China is a very important contributor and leader in the global economy. China offers a development path for emerging market countries that are in a similar position to where China was 15, 20, or 30 years ago.

"This means that they don't have to follow the model that was maybe working in the 1800s or 1900s, but they can have more modern approaches, use the benefits of new technologies, advanced policy tools, business strategies and so on," he said.

"So I think these are kind of really positive contributions that China can make in enhancing global development and global prosperity."