China and the United States need each other economically despite whatever political uncertainties lie ahead, according to a British businessman and advertising executive, who also noted that global trade patterns are shifting as new emerging markets are on the rise.
Martin Sorrell, founder and executive chairman of S4 Capital, a digital advertising and marketing services firm, told the China Global Television Network (CGTN) that the world's two leading economies are reliant on one another, despite their differences.
"There are really twin tracks with the biggest force in the world economy, the U.S., and the U.S. has around 28 trillion [dollars] in terms of GDP, China about 18 [trillion], and the world is about 105-106 [trillion]. So those two economies dominate the world's economy. And we'll have to see what happens as there's some way to go till the (U.S.) election. But given that that's a rather uncertain climate politically on that track, economically, both countries, both the U.S. and China need one another," he said.
Sorrell also offered insights into the evolving dynamics of the world economy, emphasizing the burgeoning influence of the Global South.
"I was looking at a map, it was on the Semafor [news] website a few weeks ago and it was a map of South America and it colored in each country [with] the major trading partner of each country, and it colored red for China, and it was all red. Apart from Mexico and apart from Argentina, all of the other countries, the biggest trading partner was China. And I think we are seeing a very great shift," he said.
"Another way of putting that is that the G7 (Group of Seven), or if you take the 'E7', the so-called 'emerging markets' -- these markets that have emerged like China, like India -- but if you take the E7, their total GDP currently is bigger than the G7. And if you eliminate China and the U.S. from the E7 and G7, make it an E6 versus the G6, the E6 is bigger in terms of GDP. So we are seeing a major shift in the patterns of trade," said Sorrell.
China, US need each other economically despite political uncertainties: British entrepreneur
Shanghai, a leading force for Chinese modernization, is accelerating the pace of building itself into a science and technology innovation center with global influence.
The tech-savvy metropolis is now speeding up the transition from structure building to function strengthening. Taking strengthening the capability of fostering original sci-tech innovations as the main task, it is pursuing both sci-tech innovation and institutional innovation to significantly improve its comprehensive strength in science and technology as well as the overall effects of innovations.
Over the past 10 years since Shanghai began building itself into an international science and technology innovation center, it has reaped fruitful results in sci-tech innovation, which has pushed the metropolis' GDP across the 4-trillion-yuan (about 570 billion U.S. dollars) mark.
In 2023, Shanghai's total research and development expenditure accounted for 4.4 percent of its GDP, and the city's fiscal expenditure on science and technology rose by 36.7 percent to 52.8 billion yuan (about 7.47 billion U.S. dollars).
Driven by science and technology advances, Shanghai's industrial transformation has sped up. The combined scale of the three leading industries of artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, and biomedicine in the city has reached 1.6 trillion yuan (about 226 billion U.S. dollars).
At the National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center in Shanghai's Zhangjiang Science City, Qinglong, an open-source general-purpose humanoid robot with a height of 182 centimeters and up to 43 active degrees of freedom, is being trained to pick up oranges.
"After some training, the robot will be able to complete this move by itself when it encounters a similar scenario in the future," said Shi Zhihua, trainer of robot Qinglong.
Thanks to an advanced control software, Qinglong can skillfully perform fast walking, avoid obstacles, go uphill and downhill, and resist impact.
"We plan to build a venue that can simultaneously train 1,000 robots by 2027," Shi said.
The Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF), a third-generation medium-energy synchrotron light source facility with 46 laboratories, has been operating around the clock to serve researchers from around the country, whose experiments cover a wide range of fields such as life sciences, materials science and chemical catalysis.
"We are using the SSRF's light to observe the phase change process of this material when it's heated to 1,100 degrees Celsius," said Song Shuang, a PhD candidate of Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
"Our team is developing materials for the energy sector," said Miao Zhikai, a researcher of Tianjin University.
"We are developing cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries," said Li Guodong, a researcher of Fudan University.
Though the laboratories at the SSRF have been running at full capacity, researchers still have to apply for them months in advance, reflecting the vibrancy of innovation in Shanghai.
Shanghai blazes sci-tech frontiers to boost innovation-driven modernization
