The Annual Meeting of the New Champions kicked off today in Dalian, with 1,600 leaders expected to attend. Partners include vaccine giants Pfizer and Astra Zeneca, investment firm BlackRock, Google and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
– Dalian will enhance the Forum’s influence through its openness and inclusiveness, promises the city’s mayor, Chen Shaowang.
The World Economic Forum is probably best known to the public for its annual summits in Davos, Switzerland, where influential leaders and organizations from around the world gather to discuss and set the agenda for what issues to focus on and then push for politically.
However, the Davos conference is not the only high-profile event hosted by the power network. The 15th edition of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions will take place June 25-27, with nearly 1,600 participants from some 80 countries.
– In the face of unprecedented global challenges, the power of collaboration and innovation cannot be overstated. The Annual Meeting of the New Champions will provide a unique platform for leaders to come together, share insights and drive forward-thinking solutions that can shape the future of the global economy, said founder Klaus Schwab.
“The engine room of global growth”
– Through robust dialogue and collaboration, the conference aims to forge a unified vision for development. Anticipated to highlight China’s impressive economic and social progress, as well as its commitment to high-level openness, AMNC 2024 will also present the international community with the opportunities arising from China’s modernization, said Pan Jiang, Director General of the Chinese Department of International Cooperation under the National Development and Reform Commission.
According to Liming Chen, who heads the World Economic Forum’s “Greater China” department, Asia is “the engine room of global growth, and China remains the single largest contributor”, He adds that the conference “provides a timely opportunity to jointly promote the dynamic potential of innovation and create the conditions for sustainable economic development in the region and beyond”.
“This meeting in Asia, a region that continues to drive two-thirds of all global growth, will allow leaders to collaborate and promote ways to stimulate and sustain positive economic momentum”, the World Economic further writes in a press release.
“Will increase the Forum’s influence”
This year’s conference is organized around the following six main themes:
- A New Global Economy
- China and the world
- Entrepreneurship in the Age of AI
- New frontiers for industries
- Investing in people
- Connecting climate, nature and energy
The World Economic Forum’s listed partners include BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Google, Amazon, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Coca-Cola Company.
In addition, the conference has no single chair, but rather “10 global co-chairs”, including Faisal Alibrahim, Saudi Arabia’s minister of economy and planning; Bonnie Chan Yiting, CEO of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing; Jeffrey Lu Minfang, vice chairman of China’s Mengniu Group; and UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed.
– Dalian will increase the influence of the Forum with its openness and inclusiveness, amplify the spillover effect through economic and trade interactions, highlight the characteristics of the era with technological empowerment, promote green transformation by the means of energy conservation and carbon reduction, deepen cultural exchanges with culture as the medium, and reflect the quality of the city by providing meticulous services, said the city’s mayor Chen Shaowang.