00:00Chinese Premier Li Qiang has just ended his speech at the World Economic Forum in Dalyan.
00:05He says China remains committed to opening up in a world that's growing increasingly protectionist
00:10and also praised the state of the Chinese economy,
00:12saying that it has shown resilience in the face of global turmoil.
00:16Let's get to Bloomberg China correspondent Min Min Lo now, who is at the event.
00:21Min Min, tell us about some of the other key takeaways.
00:26Yeah, this has been a 15 minutes long speech and one of the more frank and engaging speeches I've heard
00:33from Li Qiang of late.
00:35And he was really hitting back at a number of foreign criticisms of the Chinese economy, particularly when it comes
00:41to tech.
00:42We know, for example, the U.S. tech firms have been accusing Chinese AI firms of distilling their AI models.
00:49And he specifically talked about how it's impossible to copy your way to an innovation edge.
00:55And he says that China's tech resilience really is forged through painstaking development.
01:00And he talked about how China's R&D expenditure has risen by 10 percent a year annually between 2021 to
01:072025.
01:08He touted the example of Huawei and how they spend more than one trillion RMB over a decade.
01:14That's how they reach and achieve those breakthroughs.
01:17It's not from copying.
01:18And he also said it's not from the government subsidies as well.
01:22He said, to be honest, the Chinese government doesn't have enough money to give out all of that subsidies.
01:27And that comment drew some laughter from the audience there.
01:30And he also made a very strong sales pitch about China Opportunity 2.0.
01:36And this was directly challenging the idea that's floating out there by certain media talking about the China Shock 2
01:42.0.
01:43So he said that should be reframed as China Opportunity 2.0.
01:47And he talked about how in China the tech ecosystem is so deeply embedded.
01:54And it's very easy to take an idea from the blueprint to prototype to production to taking it to market.
02:02And you embed that with that 1.4 billion strong market that creates a closed loop where you can quickly
02:07test and prototype new products.
02:09And then you feed that back into corporate R&D cycles.
02:13So he talked about that.
02:14And the other thing he mentioned as well, of course, is China's stability.
02:20You know, we know that China's GDP growth in the first quarter is 5%.
02:24He said the momentum is still sound in the second quarter.
02:27That is despite we saw those economic data last week showing retail sales contracting for the first time in years.
02:35And Goldman Sachs lowering the growth forecast for China.
02:39I'm not sure how people are convinced about his comments there because of the data showing otherwise.
02:44But he's saying that the trajectory is seeing sound momentum when it comes to China's economy.
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