 Good morning. Thank you. Thank you for coming out to this early morning session on the last day of the summer Davos. I'm Stephen Engel. I'm the Chief North Asia Correspondent for Bloomberg Television. I've been out here about almost 30 years now covering the Asia Pacific, mostly in China. So we're going to have a great conversation. And I want to get your participation, obviously, in this discussion with our distinguished panel members. We will have about 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes or so first, to discuss amongst ourselves. And then we're going to open it up. So get your questions ready. And please jump to the microphone and ask the questions. Let's go down the list here and introduce everyone. To my left, Jin Ke Yu. She is the London School of Economics and Political Science Professor of Economics. Thank you very much for your time as well. Then we have as well, Ju Wei. He's the International Consultancy Accenture Senior Managing Director and Greater China Chairman. Thank you for joining us as well. Also, Paul Yong, Greater China CEO of Colbert Cravis and Robertson Company. A private equity perspective on this conversation. And at the end, but not least, of course, Lu Mingfang. Jeffrey Lu, CEO of China Mung Niu Dairy, CEO of China Mung Niu Group. Thank you so much. Again, of course, the overarching theme and headwind facing the global economy right now is the trade war and is the truce that we have seen. But despite the truce, and believe me, I was at the G20 and I was here as well Monday morning and there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief among all of you in the audience because of the truce. It relieved that big overhang of doubt. But still, the many economists are expecting the global economy this year to sink to the slowest pace of growth since 2009. Of course, when we're dealing with the initial effects of the global financial crisis. Morgan Stanley just this week, cutting its outlook for global growth, uncertainty over the U.S.-China trade war is having, quote, and this is after the truce, a more pronounced effect on business confidence and economic growth. Chetan Aya, he is the chief economist at Morgan Stanley. He says risks are decidedly skewed to the downside. So he's a bit pessimistic. Christine Lagarde, also over the weekend, saying tariffs already implemented are holding back the global economy. Unresolved issues carry a great deal of uncertainty about the future. So keep in mind, there's a truce, but the U.S. tariffs and the Chinese tariffs on each other are still in place. And there is no clear timeframe for this issue to be resolved. So that is the big issue. There are many other issues also that we have to deal with, including monetary policy across the globe. Is it a race to zero? Well, let's bring out our guess now. Let's pose the first question to you. Are you optimistic or pessimistic in the short term for the global economy? It's hard to be anything but a little bit pessimistic. Truce in the trade war does not mean progress, and we can stay there for a long period of time. We got to ask the question, is this really about making a deal, business, or is this about longer term issues, which is about the Chinese development model, Chinese aspirations and technology competition with the U.S. On the other side of the world, we have almost a Japanification of Western economies entering a little quiddity trap, very low long term real interest rates and inflation expected inflation for the next 10 years. This is a very little room to cut policy rates going forward. Now, this is the time actually when we really need aggregate demand somewhere in the world, perhaps China, but the trade war is not helping given the uncertainty with raising the aggregate demand that's deeply needed in the world. So all these factors combined, I think that the Chinese government's response is, look, we're going to loosen our monetary conditions, fiscal conditions, and we have more available levers available to the Chinese government than potentially to the U.S. government, so they are ready to handle the negative consequences of the trade war, but that doesn't mean that it won't have an impact on the economy. I think I'm cautiously optimistic. The reason I say this, you know, Accenture actually is one of the world largest management and technology service companies. We're operating China and across Asia as well, right? Just by talking to our clients and looking at the economy, you see there's three factors really seriously affecting what's going to happen here, right? The first is obviously the age of political situation, the trade war, which is now something that the local clients or your companies could have to control, but then the money, the credit and also money supply, the fund supply, that's also something which is being affected by the world economy. The third element is what companies could do, right? The manufacturing capability, the supply chain, the basically we look at the technology which also make things happening. This is the area where we see the companies are doing that, right? So this is a bit of going to be a transformation company who said that our new business model transformed themselves to get ready. Can they do this better? Can they do that well? That would really help them to determine their future. We'll get into that issue. Of course, that's a big issue. How about you, Paul? What do you see from the private equity position? I mean, you have a terrible problem. All this liquidity. What to do with it? Well, first of all, let's put the elephant in the room in a proper perspective. From the macroeconomic front, clearly I think we will see near-term dislocations in supply chains, I think this way I've said earlier. But if you think about what is that impact to China, right? China today, if you look at the top 20 exporting companies out of China, more than two-thirds of them are actually multinational companies, which means that they are in good positions to reappropriate their global capacity towards this new tariff situation. And in terms of the economy, China's export accounts for about 15% of the GDP. And about a third of that goes to US. So in a worst case scenario, even if the tariffs were imposed on the remaining $300 billion, we think the total impact to the labor market displacement will be about 9 million in manufacturing jobs and another about 6 million in associated service jobs. That's a big number, okay, not to downplay that. But as a percentage of the GDP, I think there are many levers at the government's disposal to mitigate those issues. So while these are near-term concerns, and I would say many of the people in the audience who run operating companies are seeing near-term slowdowns because of concerns and uncertainties. But if you step back and look at the grand scheme of things, it's not something that's insurmountable. So I would say that. Now, from the company level, you know, among our portfolio companies, we see this latest dislocation is a risk, but at the same time an opportunity. We see companies that are better positioned to handle this change to take this opportunity to take market share, to gain advantage. And we're also seeing good Chinese companies now need to work with international capital like ourselves to start thinking about creating manufacturing capabilities outside of China. And so I think we're beginning to see an emergence of Chinese multinational companies. And I think we've seen this from other Asian companies going down the same development path. And we should not expect China to be any different. But was that an inevitable path anyway, or is that to get around this threat of tariffs? Well, we actually see we were seeing this for years. I think this latest is just really accelerating that. I think to the same point, you know, China has been making a conscious effort to move into a more consumption centric economy. I think this latest is also an opportunity to accelerate that process as well. Jerry from Jeffrey from the dairy perspective. Well, I think I'm optimistic, because money is a young company. We are at 20 years this year. So I have to be optimistic. But seriously, I think, you know, when you look at the situation of China, I think the good thing is that consumption, the local consumption is really driving the economy, which accounts for two thirds of our GDP. If you look at our industry as a fast moving consumer goods. In the early year in dollars, people asked me about, you know, how do you see because we are probably one of the indicator if the economy is going well. And I give the answer. I said, if you look at our, you know, brands and product portfolio, you will see that our baseline, which is the mainstream and products are growing at double digit. At the same time, you see our premium line is also growing double digit. Then in the middle, we are not growing. So in the in the mid price tier, it's not growing, which is very interesting. Meaning that first, you do see that the consumption of the base consumption is strong, meaning they are consumer, you know, looking for more nutritious products. So they are moving into this category. At the same time, you see premium, which means that the middle class is growing and they are looking for better and better product. So as you know, when I look at that, I still believe that there is a huge amount of opportunities to grow. If you have the right level innovation, if you continue to drive your value to the consumer, at the same time, you know, there are a lot of changes as as as, you know, our friends just mentioned about trade and also tariff. It has an impact on us as well, because we do have a lot import. There's also a free trade in our category as well. But if you look at real, the consumption is strong. If you are really in the right position, if you innovate well, it's growing well. So so I think, you know, we should be looking at, you know, from a more optimistic side, but really to look at how we reset the the problems that we have and to give the engine for our growth. Well, I hear a sort of a tone of optimism or cautious optimism. Let me read you some comments from Dr. Doom. Noriel Rubini was on Bloomberg television yesterday morning out of Taiwan. He has a nickname Dr. Doom for a good reason. He says, we're going to have to redo the whole tech supply chain. We are in the midst of de globalization. This divorce is going to get ugly worse than what happened between China, excuse me, the United States and the Soviet Union. He says oil price shock is coming from the Iran tension. The prospect of stagflation is real. He says it's a scary time for the global economy and the risk of recession is very real next year. Now, from the dairy perspective, one on the surface of things who doesn't understand the supply chain issues globally. Are you in a way global recession proof? I mean, your stock has reflected that your stock is up 10% or 10 fold, I should say, over the last decade. Well, I would say if you look at dairy used to be a very regional business, even a country business, right? If you look at globally 50 years ago, probably a dairy is more a country-based business. But if you look at today that, you know, in our case, you will see cows are from Australia, machinery for farming are from Europe, right? Afaf is from US. So you start to see that actually, there is no longer a country-based, a regional based business, you know, anymore, it becomes more a global business. Now, having said that, with the new, I would say the new era on tariff, on the trade issues that you will see we look at more probably as reset on the global basis, meaning that today you probably will have cows from Urugua, right? So, and then you have, you know, you move around all these supply based on the new situation. So you will be a reset, meaning that this whole, again, the trade will move from country to country. But you will never stop this scenario, this situation because it will be continued to be global, no matter, you know, if the Afaf is from Spain or it is from US. But again, you cannot go back to 50 years ago and to, you know, be a solely country business again. So I think that's probably the new situation. Let me bring in Koyu here. Do we face the prospect of stag flation if there's an oil shock, prices go up, if there's a tariff war escalated, prices go up, but growth slows. Stag flation, 1970s. Nightmare. I am not of the belief that we're going to see inflation picking up anytime soon. I think there's some long term considerations that we have to face and that pushes downward pressure, including this huge drive for firms to really reduce costs. And, you know, the fact that advanced economies wages, because laborers are afraid, right? They're afraid of the future with technology and trade displacing a lot of labor, they're very weak bargaining power and we need wages to go up to push up inflation. So I think there's some long term structural issues that will keep it down. I'm not of that view, but if I may, just bringing one point that I'm hearing, which is that the trade war or trade tension is potentially a shock that can accelerate things forward. We've seen this many times before where technology adoption, offshoring, restructuring of firms usually happen when there's a big shock because when, you know, normal times people are just doing what they're doing, they won't change. So that's one thing. But I think the longer term issue for China is that U.S. Truculents or pushing China is pushing China to strive for self-sufficiency and greater technological independence. And that's an unintended consequence of the trade war that doesn't really serve U.S. purposes. Intellectual property protection, all these that are demanded of the U.S. on China, it's not bad for China that wants to enter a new phase of economic growth based on innovation. Is the trade war having an opposite effect on China that the U.S. might want? It's breeding innovation, forcing innovation, acceleration? Yeah, frankly, I feel almost of a silver lining that I think to Chinese companies, so we see they're really even the most conservative CEOs and not talk about artificial intelligence, talk about digital transformation. Frankly, the Chinese economy growth has been slowed down in recent years. It's not all the sudden. It's not really just straightly affected by the trade war. I think people understand and anticipate this trade tension will continue. It's not going to be solved overnight, right? So that's something I think people started to digest that or already done that. At the same time, we're in the era of the so-called epic disruption that has been fundamentally shake up the economy, really, you know, weakening a lot of companies. As a consultant, we're in the market front. In a few years ago, you see we're working more on to the BAT-driven, the so-called new economy. They're bringing the changes, everything, right? So then a group of companies hoping things will, you know, this is just one-time things, things we're going to pass by. But then now everybody seems like less into Jeffrey. I deeply feel, right? Everyone is going into the deep, into the technology, go to innovation. I think the Chinese economy will be resilient to, you know, the external factors by trying harder, right, to innovate and develop the capabilities, fundamentally improving their core competencies and also need to, they're also building up the ecosystem, you know, try to enable them to resist the, you know, the external factors. You know, we talk about, you know, there has been concerns about companies, international companies moving their manufacturing bases outside China. We see that, you know, inevitably probably happening. At the same time, we also see the companies, even the SMEs, trying really hard to build up the ecosystem, improving their digital supply chain to, you know, taking the defensive mode and also strengthen their capabilities. And this is a question for Paul as well as you. I mean, what happens, and I'm the journalist, so I think the worst-case scenario. I mean, if there's a true bifurcation of tech supply chains and there's a technology cold war, as we head into 5G, which is going to be like the air we breathe, it's going to be everywhere. And who's going to control that? And that's an issue that has gone to the political realm, the political sphere. How do we advise companies to face this possible scenario, whether it's a Huawei and 5G or it's anything else that gets caught in the crossfire? Well, before kind of diving to that question, I would just say, look, I think there is an inherent danger to use the old cold war framework to describe the situation that we're in today. I mean, if you look at the height of the cold war, I think that the total trade dollar amount between the Soviet block and the Western worlds amount to less than $20, $30 billion, and it's mostly concentrated on natural gases and oil and natural gases. But if you look at today's world, as we talked about earlier, so many products are produced in multiple locations. It's really hard to label one product as being an origin of by a country. So it's going to be almost an impossible surgery to really bifurcate the supply chain into two completely separate camps. You're already seeing it. Right, exactly. And so now going back to the question, I think at the end of the day, there will be some categories of products where national securities are truly a concern and those will have, you know, governments will set requirements on where these products, the suppliers of these products that can qualify. And we've seen that. The negative list, China has this negative list as far as the sectors that can come in here. They're shrinking that. Right, I think ultimately there are components that frankly are, you know, I think that the issue about national security is warranted. And but that list is right now, frankly being leveraged for other purposes, right? So in reality, we think so on the long term, they will be a category of products that will, and that every country will want to have some sort of self-reliance. But I will say by and large, most of the technology products we use, I mean, 5G is being mentioned many times, I think it just does not make economic sense to have completely two different standards. And frankly, I'm not even sure it's practicable to have two separate standards. There are so many IPs that are owned by American companies, Chinese companies, European companies. And if you were to put them apart, that already does is delay the 5G implementation. Well, that's the point. Right, and then we'll have to dupe a clay a lot of different processes. So I think when we all come to our senses, I think there will be a different classifications of technologies, some of which will certainly have that national security concern be considered and then the other will just be commercial items. I just want to raise a counterpoint. What's so bad about competition? Airbus versus Boeing, yes, it's very costly when you have increasing returns to scale to have more than one company, but there's competition. But look what's happening, though. The governments are getting involved and the Trump administration is levying tariffs on the EU because of subsidies, perceived subsidies, unfair, just another round of another four billion, I don't know, I can't even remember, is it a four billion of cheese and European exports because of the perceived subsidies and unfair subsidies given to- Well, I'm talking about technology competition. Once this wave of concern is resolved, technological companies being competing with each other is not necessarily a bad thing. But then there's the license holders, whether it's Qualcomm or Android, Google, you have these, they become national interest issues. So there's a lot of issues that you have to deal with. We don't necessarily want one monopoly around the world, that's all I'm saying. What's this all gonna mean for cross-border M&A? The risk appetite for that, Paul? Well, look, I think, you know, the Chinese government is making a conscious effort to open up some markets and we've seen some of the announcement come out last week. So we would expect more investment in these areas that are formally restricted to foreigners. And so I would say, you know, in sectors like financial services, telecommunications, there will be more foreign investments into the country. And on the, you know, China outbound, we see more Chinese companies thinking about establishing operating bases outside. So they were kind of mostly taking a form of investments rather than the outright acquisition of foreign companies, which has been weighed down the last two or three years. Initially was restricted by the Chinese government and then later on being restricted by the foreign governments, worrying about many of their more iconic companies being bought by Chinese. So we think the M&A, in terms of acquisition, outbound, it's continuously gonna be at a low level, but there will be more sort of operating investments, if you will. That actually will, especially in Asian countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, I think that will continue to rise. Jeffrey, we know the dairy industry has gone through, you know, 10-year recovery phase from the melamine crisis that we saw a decade ago, and you've had an opportunity in those 10 years to consolidate. Basically, you and E. Lee Dairy have almost 50% of the domestic market. So now that you've really seized that market share here and given the overhang of the global trade tensions, what is your risk appetite for going abroad? Well, we have made a significant effort, I think in the last couple of years, basically raising our capability in managing quality and food safety. There's a tremendous job having done to really upgrade. You know, if you look at really the way we do in the farms, like digital farms, that we are actually transformed like smart factories, we do smart logistics, cool chains, so all the effort has significantly improved the capability to manage quality in such a large scale. You know, we are shipping like 30 billion, 30 billion pack of product each year to manage that level of amount, long supply chain, at the same time to really manage a high quality level, give us the confidence on first quality, second, the capability to innovate. If you look at the market today, if you talk to our supply even today, like a tetrapack, whatever, they will tell you that the most advanced machine are in China. Most of their prototype was made together with us in China. 20 years ago, they are taking the Chinese custom to Europe and the US to see the most advanced machine. Today, they are taking customers to China to see where do we have in our factory in terms of the new innovation. So these two, I think, give us very high confidence to go out. That's the reason why actually in the Asian market we start to expand. We have our first factory last year in Indonesia, Jakarta, where we actually are making product and also marketing those product in the Indonesia market. And we have seen very, very positive result because high quality, because very innovative product and the way we manage those business are really different. And we are able to also localize. If you go Indonesia, you will see we only have like 5%, 10% people from China. The rest are really localized. We have a factory in New Zealand. I only send one guy in New Zealand. The rest are in New Zealand. I have a factory in Australia and I don't even have one people from China and they all manage by local people. So I think if you look at the technology, if you look at the quality perspective, innovation perspective and also the way that we are able to really manage a team in the local culture that we today have much more confidence to go out. And I see not only Meng Niu, but other Chinese company have the same phenomenon that how we are able to go out. Have you overcome the perception gap of the quality issues from 2008? And when you go abroad, these issues do come up. Well, actually I would say not really. We are Indonesia. We are even in Hong Kong and Singapore today. In your business, we are growing very strong in Singapore and Hong Kong. And the main reason is because we always want to go there with the best product, the premium product, high-quality innovation. So that changed the perspective. Yes, in probably China and some part of the countries, we still have a continuous effort to do, to really raise up the perception. I would say it's just a perception. But when you look at the way we are doing business, the brand, the product, the quality, it's there. So yes, we will spend time. Probably in the next few years, we have to continue to spend effort on that. But I feel that we are in the right direction. So you're saying through technology, you've been able to plug those gaps in the supply chain that we saw in 2008. There were many cottage industry farms. There'd be one farmer, one cow that you would collect from this and that. But now you can track everything through technology and everything, right? Yeah, you no longer see that. You will see that KKI actually can sell. They help us to build the biggest farming company in China where we're producing a million tons of milk each year. So that's not a paid advice. I mean, are these the kind of things that Accenture is being asked to help Chinese companies? You know, in your risk averse, you don't want to necessarily spend on something you don't know is going to have a return. But obviously, Meng Niu is seeing a great return on the investment in tech. Yeah, I definitely echo to what Jeffery was saying, right? Now you see two things, the two data we showed that. First is, I think China presents the highest investment amount in R&D and also, you know, the innovation in history, right? And then secondly, you may look at the FDI. The Albon FDI is still quite substantial. Selly growth last year is about, you know, four or five percent and the inbound also is coming. The fact is much of the investment are much more into the innovation, all right? So even Accenture opened the our Shenzhen Innovation Center two months ago and also the Shanghai Digital Lab just last month. For that investment, we're, you know, really try to support or really help to support the Chinese companies to build up or expand their capabilities in innovation, right? This is the demand, the customer requirements. That's how we're there, right? That reflects the determination and the commitment of the Chinese companies into the R&D, into the innovation, into, you know, it's not just Huawei, it's just every company in China talk about innovation, digital transformation there. Professor Jin, following up on what they are saying, you said something very interesting recently. You said, and I quote you, China sees itself less as slotting into an existing system and more as a creator and shaper of a new system. And as this plays out with their investments in the Belt and Road and other ambitions, you even said it begs the question, who is integrating whom? So in the new world order, if you will, who is integrating whom? I really think that given the circumstances, we really need to sit back and really raise a few fundamental questions. The U.S. trade tensions is also a reflection of the problems of globalization. This is not just about trade, the issues of income inequality, but it's also about financial globalization. What the city of London wants, what the governments, the business sector of the governments want is not fundamentally necessarily consistent with what people want around the world, and financial globalization has caused a lot of crises, emerging market crises in particular. So in that framework, China was slotting into the global system as it is in the early few decades because it was carefully listening to the rules and trying to learn the rules and trying to be a good participant. But in the last 20 years or so, or especially in the last 10 since the 2009 crisis, there's been more and more questions about whether the existing economic, monetary, financial architecture is a sound one. And here's an opportunity for China to really shape it. So China's no longer just slotting in, but China being also one of the largest economies in the world on its way to becoming the largest, will have an enormous impact on the world. So it's raising questions, although it hasn't found solutions, exactly what we need to do about the WTO, how to. And China here is doing a lot in terms of helping with the liquidity issues and emerging markets where the IMF fails, where the Fed, that has central bank swap lines with only six advanced economies, there's a big gap in emerging markets. The Belt wrote, it is doing its part in filling that gap, but I wouldn't say there's a comprehensive answer to where that- Because there's already pushback. There's a pushback to this reshaping. Look what's happening in the streets of Hong Kong. Look what's happened in Sri Lanka or in Malaysia to pushback to the debt diplomacy of China. And it's a perception issue, but it's also real. The former treasurer of Australia, Peter Costello said, if Australia has to choose between economic prosperity and security, it will choose security. Are we faced with that scenario as well that we have to choose between different ways? I mean, they're ideologically different and different economic models as well. Is that where we've come? And you said we like to have choice. Is that the devil's choice? It will be very costly just as we've mentioned to have a complete divide, division of trading system, technology system, and where countries are asked to choose sides. And by the way, multinational banks, multinational companies might be asked to choose sides. That would be a very, very bad direction to go, but it's plausible. It's possible. It is possible. Question time from the audience. We've... Come on. Have I not been provocative enough? Here we go. I could be more provocative. Yongyang from Chongqing Sokong Industry Group. We are a automotive OEM and taking initiative into an intelligent electric vehicle field. I view the global economy as a gearbox. And a big economy just like a big whale. And a smaller economy just like smaller whales. And they couple together. And in order for the gearbox to work in a harmonious way, the big economy can only run slower. And the smaller economy can grow faster. And when China was a small economy, it could grow at a double digit. But now China has become the second largest economy. When it remains coupled with other economies, can Chinese economy still grow at a fast rate, like 6%? And... What's your question? Can Chinese economy can still grow at a fast rate, like a 6%? Like the government is targeting. And when the economies remain coupled with other economies. Right. I mean, I think the hyper growth phase of China seeing 13, 14% growth is over, obviously. I mean, it's a much larger economy right now. But we're looking at, you know, if the full escalation of this trade war or even where it is right now, Bloomberg Intelligence expects fourth quarter to be 5.8%. This year, 6.1%. It's hard to figure out completely because the numbers are always within the range given by Li Kechang. What do you think? Well, I think that if we look at the longer term, let's move away from the trade war, there are reasons to be optimistic. Urbanization is a bit more than halfway done, still room to go. China's still developing country by a GB per capita measures and there's converges room. We talked about the youth generation and technology innovation. However, I wanna point out one thing to be cautious of is when we invest a lot in innovation, it does take time before that innovation translates into productivity where we actually see it in the data. So I believe in this, what's called the J curve where you invest, invest a lot and you see low productivity for a long period of time, which is what we're seeing actually around the world right now before it picks up. So I think longer term, we should be kind of optimistic about China given the human capital, the education system, but the numbers as reflected in the GDP growth rate, I'm not so sure. Right. Well, I just wanna share two factors. First is that you look at the Chinese economy, we all agree that economic growth was slowed down but the substance that was still there. Last year, China had about 1.33 trillion dollars on e-commerce. That's a huge, it comes about 43% of the world e-commerce. That's a huge, it's very powerful. That continued growth. And then at the same time, people say, wow, the Chinese growth, we see that is largely by digital consumer, right? The next wave we clear is come to the B2B. You know, the effort into the supply chain, effort into really the quality of the manufacturing digitalization of the manufacturing, that will bring more power to the engine, right? It's not Garabas, the engine pushing the economy grow. That will push the economy go much more faster, much more, you know, much more solid, I would say. That's very essential. What about you guys? Are you seeing that this slow down, if you will, in China is reflective of a fundamental issue? I mean, it is stimulus driven in the first quarter. Are there legs still, though, if China has to, you know, grow but without stimulating? Because that creates asset bubbles. Well, I can't comment on the quarter to quarter development, but what we're saying is that I think the percentage of GDP growth that number itself is less meaningful. What's more meaningful is the makeup of that GDP growth. I think in the past, most of the GDP growth come from fixed asset formations, real estate, being a big part of that, right? Now, what we're seeing more and more now is that the consumption is primarily gonna be a driver going forward in terms of growth. And this is something about, you know, we talk about within the KKR firm about the effect of millennials. Asia will have more millennials than America and Europe combined. And what's also different is that we are the first millennial class that has higher disposable income than their parents. And that's different from the millennials that we find in America and Europe. And that creates a really a bad rock for consumption and consumption growth. That we can talk about how they how they behave as consumers are gonna be very different. But I think the sheer volume is gonna create a large room for GDP to continue to grow in the consumption side. And they're drinking milk, right? Well, actually, I wanna come with another angle when I was at a breakfast meeting with some of the professors from China. And we have discussed that several things to share. I think obviously one poll has just said it continues local consumption is strong. Second, if you look at actually the service sector of China there is a lot room to improve productivity. Particularly in the area of house and education. So with the, you know, continue open of China, the service industry will continue to improve its productivity. That will bring back efficiency. And that will help the economy. That's the second part. The third part is 5G. Because this will have a significant amount of investment at the same time to help majority of the industry to improve our efficiency. Even on us, if you look at the digital transformation of our business, the 5G will play an important role in that. So if you add these three together which is strong consumption, improve on service in terms of productivity with openness in particular in the house and education area. And then the third which is 5G. If you add these together, you know, I feel that the growth of China GDP will still remain at a relatively high level. I don't know whether it's 6 or 6.1, 6.2 but this is probably in the next few years still you can see that. So, you know, I feel that if you have these things happening which is, you know, at the moment, I feel that we don't need to worry about if this is 6.1 and 6.2. Someone has the mic already, then we'll come down here. Yeah. Hi, my name is Bruno Ben Said. I run a small advisory firm called ShahiVest doing cross-border EV&A. I got two questions, one is for Paul and one is for everybody, Paul especially. How do you see the new star board? I mean, what signal is it giving us if it's gonna, you know, succeed or fail? What do you expect from the new board in terms of maybe cleaning up the mess of Shinsanban perhaps and giving confidence to investors again? Second question, do you see relevant any more cross-border EV&A, especially to Europe and the US? Is it still useful now that we are talking about, you know, different worlds operating perhaps a little bit more independently although the supply chain is connected is because I'm worried about cross-border because this is my bread and butter. So I want to understand if Chinese companies are still gonna keep going overseas or are we gonna see a different movement and what is gonna happen and is it gonna be important? What is it gonna tell us? Thank you very much. Well, thank you for the question. I'll take a stab at this first. In terms of the new board, you know, I think we've been telling our portfolio companies when they're thinking about exit venues. Many of our techno, especially I think our TMT related companies, that US capital markets have been the primary way of creating a listing status and thereby an exit route. More and more we see Chinese companies start thinking about other viable venues other than NASDAQ or NYSE. And I think the new board that's created is really geared towards a Chinese version of NASDAQ, right? And whether that would attract many of the good Chinese companies are currently thinking about going to US or other Western markets. And so that could be a possible venue. Now, would this lead to, again, a bifurcation of capital markets? We don't know. And certainly I think the US investors, at least right now, are a lot more familiar with more futuristic businesses. Companies that are not currently making a profit, but currently has a lot of a potential. So we're seeing a much bigger audience in the US capital markets than we have here in Asia. But with that change, we don't know. But clearly, having a viable alternative is always good. So I mean, Hong Kong has been changing its listing rules. Yeah, the new class shares, they are attracting Alibaba's likely to come back and others could delist from New York or just have secondary listings. But the trend to move back here, is that being driven by the push to come home because of that bifurcation? Or is it what's happened to this pool? Yeah, I think a lot of people think there's some national agenda, having these exchanges and there are some regulations. I think there were some comments made by a congressman in the US about that America must have the rights to audit the Chinese companies books if they were listed in the US. I mean, there are some noises around that, but I fundamentally believe that companies make commercial decisions where to list at the end. I mean, some businesses are just better suited to be listed in China or Hong Kong and some are better in the US. I think fundamentally at the end is where your investor audience are aggregating, I guess. So I would say, would this be, is there some national agenda behind it? Probably, but I would say fundamentally for a board to be successful, it must provide commercial value to these companies. Not to your second question. Cross-border? Yeah, cross-border. Look, the first wave of China outbound M&As were actually led by SOEs and they were focused primarily on natural resources. And then within the second wave was by private sector companies looking to buy technology brands. And I think going forward, you will see, I mean, I think you're gonna see is a pushback on technology and brand. Because I think other foreign countries are also worried about their iconic companies being purchased by the Chinese. The civius is a big barrier to many Chinese companies looking to buy businesses overseas. But however, we're seeing more and more of Chinese companies that are going out there not to buy brand and technology. And frankly, a lot of technology now, I think China, homegrown technologies are probably even more superior than what a technology that they're competing with overseas. But now I think the focus is more shifting to channels. So they're buying customer base, buying channels. And also being investing in production base. So among one example, Australia, New Zealand, they're buying customer base, they're buying access. They're building production capabilities. So I think the focus has been shift from firstly SOEs on natural resources then to bring technology and brands and now is to more customer access and production base. And frankly, that's not that different from other multinational companies, if you think about it. I think China companies are going to be acting more and more like multinationals than in a separate category. Anybody else wanna stab at that? We'll go to the next question. Okay, 12 minutes. I'm like the Shinkansen train. We're gonna end on time. My name is Martin from Temenos. I got a question in regards to the title of the session, which is the Asian view. And we have more or less exclusively been discussing about the Chinese view. So my question is, are there any, what is happening in the rest of Asia? Are there any winners or losers based on the current frictions of between China and the US, Vietnam, India, what's happening with ASEAN? Do you have any views on that part of Asia? We talk about Vietnam. I mean, it has one of the youngest populations in all of Asia, whereas Japan has one of the eldest and even China, that age, I don't remember what they call it, but the number of working age people in the next 30, 40 years is gonna flip over on China. But young economies like Indonesia and also Vietnam, what do you guys think? Well, first of all, I think with trade tensions between East and West, there's a stronger regional trade, potential trade integration within Asia. And most of the trade happens locally within the region. So that's really important. That comes down to whether the leaders of the region can push for stronger trade ties within that region. But as I've mentioned before, some of these shocks acts as an accelerator. It will accelerate the moving of the lower end manufacturing, low skilled kind of production to countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh, lower cost and accelerate that process of supply chain shifts. But that said, I think generally, at least in the short term, most of the Asian economies will suffer from the trade tensions, especially because of uncertainty in the business environment. You're looking, are you looking, Jeffrey, are you looking at the other areas? Actually, if we just did a strategic map for the rest of Asia, it will be fine, interesting. If I have to use just one simple description, if you see a younger China in a way in the rest of the Asia, and particularly in the Asian market, when you look at a population of 650 million people, they are younger than China, they need investment, and it's growing quite steadily. Even from a dairy sector perspective, the consumption continued. It was, it was, most of the country are not a dairy drinking history kind of a country, but if not only dairy, but all for the rest of the consumer goods, it's the same trend that it is really steadily growing, very robust, young millennia, young population, household income is growing, and also importantly, political side, it's much more stable, I would say, in the recent years. So this will add, again, for us, it's another strong leg of growth for future. Here in the front, I'll try to get in the back. Okay, we will talk about a trade. I think for the scale of the goods trade, America and China almost have a similar scale or somewhat the same, but for the service trade, I think for China, it's only half of the US scale, and in China, I think the government also have intentions to develop the service trade. I know Mr. Zhu and Ex-Centure is the biggest service agency, I think globally, right? So can you provide some kind of experience? And I also know that in Dalian, the ITR sourcing is a very big pillar of business in Dalian, so any advice from other is also very good to know. We know services take up more than half of the economy here or more than manufacturing. Yeah, well, I think clearly, I think the Chinese economy is shifting more into the service. In Dalian, actually, we have over 10,000 people, primarily doing the technology and business service sourcing, I see the market is still growing very rapidly in China and also across the region. Overall, that is, again, the composition of the economy actually shifting much more on a service orientation. People may think this is a reason for that. We have such a, also in business, it was because we have relatively cheap labor. Actually, the things are changing as well, right? Now in Dalian, we apply RPS robots a lot into our service automation quality, right? That really, again, you look at the economy, you cannot just look at the size, you cannot just look at the number, you have to look at the substance, what's in there? In there, there's a substantiated changes every day in this country, in this economy, in every company we're serving, right? That is really pushing the economy moving to a much more healthier, much more market driven, much more transparent stage. That's how I see the power of Asia, right? Now, we talk about Southeast Asia as well, right? Now, I think as the Malaysian Premier was talking about, two elephants are fighting the animals around or even grass are being factored, right? But this is good and bad, right? We see, I think countries are benefited from a lot of changes here in China because the e-commerce is pushing much more downward to Southeast Asia. There's more trade or business realignment in the region in there, right? So the question is, it's not really anything absolute. It is really up to how the country or the company, how you want to do, right? What are you gonna do? You can now just wait to see what's gonna happen. You have to be on your own to decide, prepare, anticipate, right? To do things, then to mitigate that risk. Then the opportunity will come. Frankly, I see it's still a great opportunity in front of all of the, not just China, in Southeast Asia countries as well or also in India, in all those countries across Asia. I promise the question in the back there. The gentleman there and then we'll come over. Thank you. My question is regarding the trade war between the US and China. China we know is suffering and the US is suffering one way or another because a lot of Americans should know manufacture job is not moving back to US. Is it moving to India and being non-banked lunch, right? So my question is, do you think US and China will ever reach a comprehensive trade deal? And it's not just a beginning of new format of coal war, you know, especially from US upon view. You know, it's a two-world country with different ideology, different system, different culture. So this is my question to all the panelists. Thank you. So Steve Mnuchin, the US Treasury Secretary, says we're 90% there to a deal. Is a 90% deal better than no deal or what's gonna happen? Anybody? Nobody? Well, I think the, well, as a consultant right now, we always advise our clients to prepare for all weather. You can now dream something happens next day, you're gonna anticipate things may take time and there may not be a perfect answer, right? So I think these dialogue will probably continue. This trade tension will still continue, right? I think you see a comment, right? I think that another comment is still very powerful. This has been a lot of interactions, but eventually there will be a equally liberal achieve. There will be something rich over the time. This is how we feel very optimistic on that outcome, right? But then the question is how through that process of what you can do, right? What you can do for your company, your business. I think that's very, very crucial. The problem is there's the red lines on both sides, but they won't cross. What China has learned in the last few months is that by appearing a bit too eager to have a deal done, making too many conciliatory steps to maintain comedy was not necessarily a good strategy, at least in dealing with a person like President Trump. So my guess is that we're gonna see this tit for tat kind of back and forth for a while because you gotta ask what is the incentive to make the trade deal done? Now China's strategy is let's just play it cool. Let's sit back and let's play it cool because if the trade war actually hits the economy in the US bad enough so that Trump needs to get a deal done before the re-elections, then we'll come back to the table and renegotiate. But until then, just trying to offer new steps forward and this and that didn't buy it that much. So I think the current strategy at least as is played, it seems to suggest that there will be some time before this really gets completely resolved. Kick the can down the road and see what the election happens. What happens in the election, yeah. Over here, far right. There's been a lot of talk about efficiency and technology going into the supply chains. What happens to jobs? I mean, the country needs to employ people. So if we move towards a more automated world, jobs are the key to economic growth. It's key to the consumer that everyone talks about. So in the near term, what do you see happening to that consumption story as companies are making these productivity improvements? That's a great question because that goes into demographics as companies go into more automation, governments like job creation. Look at the PMI sub-index on employment sank to the lowest level here in China since 2009. So what's going on? How are we gonna keep jobs but still go automation? I think at Central as a study, we're looking at what artificial intelligence could do, right? We're seeing that the economy will grow. Our forecast is by year 2035, there will be 1.6% GDP generated by artificial intelligence, which actually brings also opportunities to the jobs as well, right? Now people are gonna say, this is just your assumption. What's it really gonna happen, right? What we see is that automation replacing the people, right? Now, like even in our Dalian outsourcing centers, what we're eliminating is the jobs doing the boring repetition type of stuff, right? So people will be afraid to something more high-end or more require more human in moment. So actually, we have published a book in recent months called The Human and Machine. It addressed that that between the automation and people, there is a middle area. We're actually creating a lot of opportunities for the human to link with the machine, training emotional involvement into the workforce. There are a lot of new opportunities to create it to actually to the economy. I see this as another something negative but much more positive, but that gonna take a bit of time and transformation there. I always like to give the final minute, final thoughts. You came here to the panel with, you wanted to say something but didn't get to final thoughts? Jeffrey? I would say just back to that question on creating jobs. I think it's always that the perception and also the willingness to invest, the capability to innovate that will bring more jobs and bring more energies to drive the economy growth. So I think this is probably one last poll that I would have. It leads to more jobs, Paul. Well, just built on that. I think maybe a word of comfort is that don't worry the economy will find a way. We've seen technology automation as early as a couple hundred years ago and people still stay full employed. So I think the key is education is to turn our labor force to adopt, adapt a different skill set. I think that's what Paramount. In my household, I always give the final word to the ladies. Talk less, do more, strengthen your own countries and there will be no war between the countries. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the wonderful panel. Thank you very much. Thank you.