Innovation driven by sci-tech progress has become a new growth engine for China's high-quality development, said Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
In an exclusive interview with China Media Group (CMG), Brende noted that China had undergone heavy industrialization and prioritized manufacturing and is now pivoting decisively toward emerging technologies -- a development he described as truly remarkable.
He also commended the Chinese President Xi Jinping's assessment that scientific and technological innovation serves as the fundamental driver for achieving high-quality development.
"He got it right, because this is where the future growth will come. We know also when China really invests in something, it also gave quite impressive yield. Look at solar panels, they're one tenth the price compared to 10 years ago. So now many places in the world the cheapest energy electricity you can get are from solar. That's because it was invested and all this, so China is also in the situation, though, that when China in the Five-Year Plan, China can allocate resources more effectively than some other nations. So, China can say, we're now doubling down on research and development, we're doubling down on investments, we're doubling down, also developing our universities. And that will also increase, of course, China's competitiveness," said Brende.
Meanwhile, the WEF president said that China is expected to take the lead globally in many fields in the future thanks to its advanced artificial intelligence.
"China has chosen the open source, while some of the big American companies have a different approach. I think China now is making a lot of progress in many of these areas. And I think there is competition now between the Chinese companies and the American companies. But you know, as long as there is a level playing field, competition is not a bad thing. People do well when there is competition and I think that artificial intelligence will lead also to scientific breakthroughs that we haven't seen in a long time. Why am I saying that, for example, in medicine, you know, it takes maybe 20 years to research something and have humans then to collect all the information and the statistics and put it together. Artificial intelligence can make a process that took 20 years, for example, in cancer research maybe do it in five years and that will then make things much easier for scientists and then you can develop are also drugs and other things much faster," he explained.
Sci-tech innovation new growth engine for high-quality development: WEF president
