00:00I think what's the most remarkable at the CDF is how unremarkable the messages are.
00:05If you have sat here for the last two years, the message is the same one, right?
00:09It's around China's overall business, we're 30% of global growth, right?
00:14And if you come here, and today we heard for the first time,
00:18Premier Li Zhang was talking about China as a gym,
00:21where companies are training up their muscles.
00:23And I've been saying that we are in the world's toughest gym here, right?
00:26This is where, you know, companies find it difficult.
00:28But at the same time, if you survive, right, you can thrive anywhere.
00:32You're also seeing companies, multinational companies, Western companies, coming back,
00:37dipping their toes back in the water after a few years of skepticism
00:40and getting punished back home by guilty by association.
00:44It's different now, isn't it?
00:45If you look around here, I think that you're having the best attendance, right, of CDF.
00:50And if you look at even last year, the amount of tourists and business travelers to China
00:54is at an all-time high.
00:55So if you look at what is this renewed interest,
00:57I think it's a little bit of this acknowledgement that this is a market we can't miss.
01:01This is a market where innovation is happening.
01:03This is a market where it's a little bit too big to ignore.
01:07It's a market where, to be honest for them, it also represents a lot of the future.
01:11So if I look at the business conversations around,
01:14a few years ago, it was like, is China investable?
01:17Right now, the question is, like, how do I invest
01:20that I can actually make it better for me, for the rest of the world?
01:24What do you tell your clients when they ask that question?
01:27Is it investable or is there still that risk?
01:30There's always risk, I know.
01:31China is always having, there's a risk premium as well.
01:34I'll give you one example.
01:36In the last three weeks, as the world goes into a lot of turmoil,
01:40I see a lot of Chinese clean energy companies, wind power, solar companies,
01:46are looking at this saying that we are seeing interest in us,
01:50not just because of sustainability, but because of resilience, right?
01:55What China has been doing in terms of, like, its clean energy
01:58and, you know, the different source of energy, renewal energy.
02:02I think it's really something that actually everyone's looking at as an example
02:05of what perhaps we can do.
02:07One more example, right?
02:08I think that China, in the last few weeks,
02:10have now become the biggest exporter of tokens.
02:14So the next export from China, you can't tariff it.
02:17It's going to be tokens.
02:18So it's quite interesting how, when people come to China these days,
02:22it's looking a little bit into the future
02:23and looking a little bit into what can that help us in our country
02:28advance our own agendas.
02:29And I think that's very different than before,
02:32where it was around, can I sell more in China?
02:34Can I make my China business bigger?
02:35I think the mentality is now very, very different.
02:38How do you see the oil shock affecting this economy?
02:40Because they've been trying to get out of persistent deflation
02:43for four years at the factory gate.
02:45This could kind of kickstart them out, like Japan saw that as well,
02:50kickstarting fuel-led inflation.
02:52But again, is it the right kind of inflation?
02:55It's cost-based.
02:57It's not demand-based inflation.
02:59I think, like many economies around the world,
03:02I think China is dependent on oil.
03:07I do think that it's a shock to everyone.
03:09But at the same time, I do think that I look around in the China economy
03:14and the industrialists around.
03:15I think people do think that China also has many alternative energy sources.
03:21I think that China has been actually building a lot of these over the last couple of years.
03:25So I would say that the resilience of the industry in China
03:29is something where people are confident about.
03:33Will that lead into a little bit of a price increase?
03:36Absolutely.
03:37Is that a bad thing?
03:38Maybe not.
