China has enormous innovation capacity to spur growth: experts

Economists and business leaders at the 2024 Bund Summit agreed that China's long-term quest for high-quality development and its capacity to innovate have become new engines for its economic growth in the long run.

Nobel Laureate in Economics Michael Spence told the three-day summit via video link that China is facing a short-run aggregate demand problem, but in the long run, China's growth will be driven by the enormous capacity to innovate and increase productivity.

Spence said China's economy will depend on the continued structural transformation on the supply side in the long run. "The growth potential is really quite substantial," he added.

Liu Jun, president of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, said that China's economy will regain its great potential, as it can transform the whole economy to a new and high-quality level.

"Technologies like the Internet of Things, cloud computing and AI drive the new economic paradigm. China's huge market and population (is) coupled with the Chinese people's passion for trying new things," Liu said.

Also at the summit, Standard Chartered's China CEO Jean Lu said that China's economy is undergoing a major transformation with the cultivation of new quality productive forces.

New technologies and high-tech enterprises are emerging and developing fast, and the transformation and upgrade of the Chinese economy is accelerating, Lu said, noting that it is a remarkable trend and will boost China's economy in the long run.

Thomas Fang, head of China global markets at UBS, said facing the complex and changeable international environment and the profound adjustment of economic structure, new opportunities and waves are emerging in China.

The digital economy, high-end manufacturing, new energy, and other high-tech fields will become the power source of China's economy, Fang said.

"Here we see many opportunities associated with the development of AI," said Tim Wannenmacher, co-head of Global Markets Asia Pacific at UBS, adding that the country benefits from the advantage of an active engineering talent pool, large amounts of data and diverse application scenarios for large language models.

The 2024 Bund Summit, themed "Navigating a Changing World," was held in Shanghai from September 5 to 7. This year's summit gathered former central bank governors, leading economists, and business leaders, among others from across the world.