 at all guests, a delightful stay in Tianjin. Thank you all for your presence and support. Thank you Mayor Zhang Gong for your speech and now please all be upstanding and let us offer a warm round of applause as we welcome the Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, His Excellency Mr Li Qiang and the Founder and Executive Chairman of the WEF, Professor Klaus Schwab. Premier Li Qiang, distinguished Heads of Governments, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning. It's a great pleasure to welcome you to the 14th annual meeting of the new champions here in Tianjin, China. This is a very special occasion for the World Economic Forum and myself as we are returning to our summer doubles after three years, painful years of virtual gatherings due to the pandemic. The theme of this year's meeting is entrepreneurship, the thriving force of global economy. We are living in a time of unprecedented change and disruption driven by advances in science and technology, by intense geopolitical tensions, as well as by social and environmental challenges. All those factors will impact the future of humanity. The world in those times needs bold and visionary leaders who can harness the power of innovation for the common good and who can collaborate across sectors, regions, nations and cultures to create a more peaceful, inclusive, sustainable and resilient future. We are proud that you, the new champions of innovation from over 90 countries, have joined us here in Tianjin. You represent the brightest and best minds from business, government, civil society, academia and the arts. You are the pioneers, the entrepreneurs, the disruptors and the creators who are shaping the new frontiers of human progress. You are also the stakeholders who have a strong responsibility to ensure that innovation serves humanity and not the other way around. You are also today the stakeholders who have a social responsibility and environmental responsibility. For this special occasion today, we are extremely honored to have you here with us, your Excellency Li Jiang, Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. Premier Li is the ex-Premier of the People's Republic of China and a member of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee Politburo Standing Committee. Premier Li has a distinguished career in public service, having led the economic and social development of three major provinces, Zhou Yuzheng, Yang Xiu and Shanghai. He has also been instrumental in opening up China's capital market, attracting foreign investment and innovation, and creating new urban areas to address land scarcity. Premier Li took his office this March at China's National People's Congress at a critical moment when China adopted new COVID control measures and started to boost economic development, social dynamism and international cooperation. China has set ambitious and encouraging economic host targets of above 5% for 2023. In the first half year, China has made remarkable achievements in economy, in social development, in diplomacy and in many other areas. However, like we all in the world, China is facing challenges in domestic consumption, employment, regional development balance and geopolitical frictions. Premier Li, you will share with us today's China strategy for the future development of China and China's roadmap in tackling the challenges it faces. We are very much looking forward to your opening remarks, and I know that participants would very much like to be enlightened in hearing your perspectives of China's economic potential, great potential, China's philosophy in global cooperation, China's opportunities for global companies and many other issues. The forum, with its over 40 years of friendly and extensive partnership with China, today's the second largest economy in the world, will continue to fight fragmentation and strive for dialogue, understanding and collaboration. As we stand for a future where nations have to work together for the collective well-being for humanity. We appreciate the long-term support from our Chinese friends, from many ministers who are here with us today as well. Thank you for your participation. Premier Li, we are eager to learn from your vision on China and the world. Please join me here at the podium. Professor Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, your Excellencies heads of government, heads of international organizations, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, friends, good morning. It gives me a great pleasure to join friends, old and new, here in the port city of Tianjin for the 14th annual meeting of the new champions. Let me begin by extending on behalf of the Chinese government warm congratulations on the opening of the event and a hearty welcome to all participants and journalists. This is the first in-person annual meeting since COVID-19 struck over three years ago. Everyone is following this closely. In the past few years, the ones in a century pandemic compounded by transformations unseen in a century has brought significant change to our world. On the one hand, the impact of COVID-19 still lingers. Unilateralism, protectionism and de-globalization are on the rise. Global challenges are escalating and regional conflicts keep flaring up. Instability, uncertainty and unpredictability have become commonplace. On the other hand, the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is gaining momentum. Humanity is as steadfast as ever in pursuing peace and development. For most countries, the aspiration for win-win cooperation has grown even stronger. The world is standing at historical crossroads. How should humanity navigate such turbulent times is a crucial issue of shared concern for people of all countries. I believe that we could draw some very important lessons from the transformations happening in the world in the past several years. I would like to make mainly four points and share them with you today. First, having experienced barriers, both visible and invisible ones, we should all the more cherish communication and exchange. For quite a while, face-to-face interaction, something we took for granted before, was made very difficult because of the pandemic. As the pandemic subsides, the visible barriers it caused will eventually be removed. However, the invisible barriers put up by some people in recent years are becoming widespread and pushing the world into division and even confrontation. This is a bigger cause for concern. Differences in human perception and the diversity of civilizations have been with us since ancient times. These differences should not be a cause for estrangement for different countries, different people and different groups. Instead, these differences should become a driver for even more communication and exchanges. The absence of effective communication and the lack of comprehensive holistic and objective perception could easily lead to prejudice and even stereotypes. Living in the same global village, we, the humankind, must eliminate the visible barriers and more importantly, remove those invisible ones. Different countries, ethnic groups and civilizations need to deepen mutual understanding and strengthen dialogue to bridge differences and expand common ground. From my perspective, what is crucial for communication and exchanges is sincerity. Only by treating each other with sincerity can we truly know and understand each other in order to avoid misperception and miscalculation. Effective communication, even if it only brings understanding, not agreement, would help reduce many of the disputes in today's world. The World Economic Forum, I think, is an important platform to facilitate such mutual understanding. Yesterday, I met with Professor Schwab. I said back then that in the world today, the World Economic Forum is of crucial importance in today's context. We thank Professor Schwab. Thank you very much. The second observation I would like to make is that having experienced the shocks of global crises, we should all the more cherish solidarity and cooperation. The history of human society is a record of human battles against and victories over challenges and difficulties. In phase of a momentous crisis, no country can stay unscathed or solve the problems single-handedly. Solidarity and cooperation is the right way forward. In the past three plus years, all countries have fought hard against the pandemic. It demonstrates the powerful strength of humanity pulling together and looking out for each other in hard times. COVID-19 will not be the last public health crisis humanity faces. Global public health governance needs to be enhanced. Meanwhile, we're also confronted with a multitude of global challenges, such as climate change, debt risks, slowing growth, a wealth gap, etc. These are the issues facing humanity. As a community with a shared future, we must cherish the gains of our cooperation, embrace the concept of win-win cooperation, and work together to tackle these global challenges and promote human progress. As you know, we no longer live in a era where we can go it alone. It is no longer an era where we champion individual heroism. It is an era of cooperation and mutual assistance. From addressing the major issues I mentioned above to making breakthroughs in a research project, teamwork, and interdisciplinary strength should be brought to bear. One could say solidarity and cooperation has become an important way for us humanity to think and act. This is my second observation. The third observation I would like to make is that having experienced the ups and downs of economic globalization, we should all the more cherish openness and cooperation. Economic globalization is a historical trend. Despite the headwinds and pushback, the overarching trend of economic globalization has kept moving forward. In particular, the rapid advance of new technologies such as digital technology and artificial intelligence is creating favorable conditions for economic globalization. The world should not and cannot return to a state of mutual seclusion or isolation. A few days ago I was in Europe and I visited Germany and France. I had in-depth exchanges with leaders and people from political and business communities. The prevailing view is to reject the zero sum mindset and return to the right track of win-win cooperation. As you know, some in the west are hyping up the so-called phraseologies of reducing dependencies and de-risking. These two concepts, I would say, are false propositions. As economic globalization has already made the world, economy, an integral whole where everyone's interests are closely entwined. Countries are interdependent, interconnected on each other, on their economies. We can enable each other's success. This is something good rather than something bad. If there is risk in a certain industry, it is not the call or decision by a particular organization or a single government. It is businesses that are most sensitive and are hence in the best position to assess such risks. They should be left to come to their own conclusion and make their own choice. Governments and relevant organizations should not overreach themselves, still less overstretch the concept of risk or turn it into an ideological tool. We must follow the trend of history, cement the consensus on development, and continue our efforts to build an open world economy. We should oppose the politicization of economic issues and work together to keep global industrial and supply chains stable, smooth, and secure in order to deliver the fruits of globalization to different countries and groups of people in a more equitable way. There is certainly no denying that with openness and cooperation comes competition. This requires us to get the relationship between competition and cooperation right, properly handle conflicting interests, and in particular look for even more areas where interests converge. Simply put, we must work together to advance toward cooperation in order to make the pie bigger and then look into how to share it appropriately. If the cake itself is small, even if we give it to one party, that is not something we are looking for. We believe that the premise of development is cooperation. We need to develop together. These are the three observations I made, and the fourth one is that having experienced the anxiety caused by conflict and turmoil, we should all the more cherish peace and stability. Without peace, nothing can be achieved. This is a hot lesson humanity has learned from history. In the past 100 plus years, the world went through two world wars and more than 40 years of cold war before the humanity could finally enjoy a period of relative stability and development. We must cherish it. However, we are seeing quite unfortunate events. Recent years have witnessed repeated rhetoric by some to stoke ideological confrontation, hatred, and prejudice. These rhetorics keep coming up, and as a result, we are seeing acts of encirclement and suppression and even regional wars and conflicts. People in the regions concerned have suffered deeply, and great damage has been done toward development. Peace is highly precious, and development is never easy. It takes persistent efforts to deliver these two lofty goals. We must act in the common interest of humanity and live up to the responsibility for peace and development. We need to uphold fairness and justice, overcome the security dilemma, and work collectively to safeguard a peaceful and stable environment for development. In China's official lingo, we compare security to the number of one and other things, the many zeros that come after it. In a numerical sense, without the number one, all the zeros following it would come to nothing. That is how crucial security is. I believe this is the case for a country, a region, and more broadly the entire world. Peace and stability are a fundamental prerequisite for development and everything else. A shifting world can be revelatory in many ways. In a nutshell, what is lacking in today's world, I believe, is communication, not estrangement, cooperation, not confrontation, openness, not isolation, peace, not conflict. We must act on the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind put forward by President Xi Jinping and jointly implement the global development initiative, the global security initiative, and the global civilization initiative. We need to press ahead by following the logic of historical progress, develop by riding the tide of our times, and work hard to build an even better world. Ladies and gentlemen, friends, as a responsible major country, China has all along stood firmly on the right side of history and on the side of human progress. Holding high the banner of peace, development, and win-win cooperation, China is committed to building world peace, promoting global development, and upholding the international order. Most notably, since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, we have focused on promoting high quality development, realized the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects as planned, and did absolute poverty in China once and for all, and embarked on a new journey toward building a modern socialist country in all respects. Today, the Chinese economy is deeply integrated into the world economy. China has developed itself by embracing globalization and grown into a most staunch force for globalization. Over the past decade, China has been an important source of impetus for the steady growth of the world economy. In the past 10 years, the Chinese economy grew at 6.6% on average annually. Its share in global economic output increased from 11.4% in 2012, which is 10 years ago, to 18% last year. That is the share of our economy in the world, that is 18%. China's trade in goods ranked the top in the world for six years in a row. On average, China's contribution to global growth was over 30% every year. China has been the biggest engine driving global growth. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, China was the only major economy in the world that registered a positive growth. In the past three years, we have encountered various difficulties, but China achieved an average annual growth of 4.5%, which is about 2.5 percentage points higher than the world average, and was among the best performers of the world's major economies. As it pursues interconnected development with other countries, China has honoured its WTO accession commitments by opening up its market to the rest of the world and sharing its development opportunities with all, making itself a major trading partner of over 140 countries and regions. China's development has improved the lives of the Chinese people, and also provided people in other countries with a large amount of quality yet inexpensive products. China has served as an important anchor and source of impetus for free trade and stable growth in the world. In the longer time to come, China will continue to provide strong dynamism to the world economic recovery and growth. China today is still the world's largest developing country. It has a population of over 1.4 billion. We have a big economy, but divided by 1.4 billion at per capita level, our economic indicators and living standards are only modest. Our development remains unbalanced and inadequate, and yet such imbalance and inadequacy is also where China's development potential and space lie. We are acting on a new development philosophy, fostering a new development paradigm at a faster pace and working hard to achieve high quality development. We are introducing more practical and effective measures to further attack the potential of domestic demand, invigorate the market, make urban, rural and regional development more coordinated, accelerate the green transition, and advance high standard opening up. These measures are making a difference. From what we see this year, China's economy shows a clear momentum of rebound and improvement. GDP grew by 4.5% in the first quarter year on year and expected to expand faster in the second quarter than in the first. We are on track to hit the growth target of around 5% we set for the whole year. Some international organizations and institutions have recently revised up their growth forecasts for China this year, demonstrating their confidence in China's development prospects. We have full confidence and the ability to achieve the steady growth of the Chinese economy, on the track of high quality development in a long time to come. This will increase the size of the market, create opportunities of cooperation, and provide a consistent source of dynamism to the world economic recovery and growth, as well as opportunities of win-win cooperation to investors from all countries. Ladies and gentlemen, friends, the Chinese people often say heroes show their metal in the test of time. In this time of much uncertainty, entrepreneurs with your keen grasp of the market, your initiative and your actions can bring greater certainty to the world. The theme of this year's annual meeting, entrepreneurship, the driving force of the global economy, cannot be more fitting. Entrepreneurs from different countries may be distinct in different ways, but I believe the core attributes of entrepreneurship are the same, and I think they are a sharp sense, relentless drive, and an extraordinary ability to act in business startup innovation and creation. China wishes to work with all of you to firmly support economic globalization, firmly uphold the market economy, firmly support free trade, and steer the world economy toward a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable future. Last week, the Chinese people celebrated the traditional Dragon Boat Festival. An important sport for the festival is Dragon Boat Racing. This sport captures the Chinese people's wish for fair weather and good crops. It also embodies a simple truth. When everyone paddles together, they can drive a big boat forward. Let us be united in our wish for win-win cooperation, paddle together with one heart and one mind, and steer the giantship of the world economy toward a brighter future. I wish this year's meeting a full success. Thank you. Thank you for your insightful speech, for your four observations, and for your commitments to global cooperation and entrepreneurship. We have seen in your speech great confidence in terms of the resilience and growth, and also of the potential of contribution of the Chinese economy to the world. But even more important, a strong commitment for global cooperation in addressing our common challenges together. Primarily, let's paddle together. Thank you.