00:00Well, Dr. Carl Fay is Professor of Strategy at BI Norwegian Business School.
00:04Professor, welcome. Good to see you.
00:06Well, they gather in interesting times.
00:08Just how significant is this year's gathering?
00:13Well, I think the thing that strikes one most is the scale of things.
00:17This has moved from a smaller thing to a really large thing.
00:21Now this year, 155 countries are represented here.
00:24290 of the 500 largest firms in the world are here.
00:30They're expecting about 450,000 visitors.
00:33So this is surely not small.
00:36And I think we're seeing some important themes like AI and the green transition mentioned a lot at the Hongqiao Forum that I'm talking about, which is part of this.
00:48And we see also increasing prevalence in areas like the silver economy, which is becoming really important for China along with health care.
00:58China's premier in his speech talking about China's commitment to what he called high standard opening up and expanding market access, especially in the services sector.
01:09And what does that look like in practice?
01:10And what does that mean in particular for European businesses?
01:14Well, the state council has recently approved 155 pilot programs to open up the service sector.
01:24I think some of the reason for this is that while there's been lots of talk about many countries, probably most loudly, the U.S. having a trade deficit with China.
01:32You know, the U.S. and many European countries have a trade deficit in trade of products, but they actually have a trade surplus when it comes to trade and services.
01:43So I think China has realized, OK, so, you know, everyone can specialize in what they're best at doing.
01:48If European countries are really good at services, let's leverage that.
01:52And so I've done things like allowing doctors to press practice in China who are foreign doctors without getting certification here on a short term basis in the financial sector.
02:02Now, pension funds and insurance companies are able to work here.
02:06And it's even possible to open up foreign nursing schools, for example.
02:13So we see a number of different pilot projects and they see what works and what doesn't work and build on that.
02:19The premier also mentioning in his speech China's willingness to work with partners to strengthen global trade governance.
02:28In particular, I wonder how that looks like for China EU collaboration.
02:33Well, I think there are a number of things.
02:37One of the most sort of visible things, which may seem at first to be small, but I think is a pretty big deal, is that China has been expanding its visa-free business possibilities.
02:47So now a lot of European countries can come and do business for a period of time visa-free.
02:54And so that just makes it that much easier to come and, you know, work in China.
02:59Also, I think Europe is trying to, you know, keep more moderate or even no tariffs with China.
03:07Norway has done a particularly good job of that where I'm based, you know, in electric vehicles.
03:12Much of the world has put tariffs on Chinese EVs.
03:16Norway has decided not to have any tariffs on EVs.
03:20And this has helped Norway to be the country in the world that has the highest percentage of new car sales being EVs, about 95%.
03:28So, you know, especially when we talk about things like the green transition, we need to all collaborate together.
03:35Because you can't sort of say we're going to have Norway be beautiful and green and the rest of the world not.
03:40You know, we're all intertwined in that.
03:41And I think China has recognized that.
03:43And I think so.
03:44This is one area that probably all of Europe, which has been a leader in different green technologies, can probably collaborate a lot with China.
03:52Carl Fay, thank you for that.
03:53Dr. Carl Fay, Professor of Strategy at BI Norwegian Business School.
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