Last Wednesday at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) campus in Zurich, more than 100 people attended the half-day conference “China in 2023: a “new” normal? Impact and Outlook”, held just over 3 weeks after China’s annual parliamentary meetings – more commonly known as the 2 Sessions/Lianghui/两会.

Through the interventions of several handpicked experts, the objective was to take stock of China today and its evolution in the coming months and years, especially on topics of interest to Swiss companies doing business in this country.

We would like to thank all those who accepted to share their knowledge and analysis, including the Swiss Ambassador to China Juerg Burri, his Chinese counterpart in Switzerland His Excellency Wang Shihting as well as Ivo Germann, Head of the Foreign Economic Affairs Directorate at SECO Economic Cooperation and Development .

Our sincere thanks go also to Rudolf Minsch (economiesuisse), Nicolas Musy (Swiss Centers China, China Integrated), Hans Greter (K.R. Pfiffner AG), Prof. Bin Xu and Dr. Gianfranco Siciliano (China Europe International Business School (CEIBS)), Dr. Tomas Casas i Klett (Tomas C K University of St.Gallen), Markus Herrmann 陈瑞华 (China Macro Group), Stefan Schmid (PwC Switzerland) and Felix Sutter (Swiss-Chinese Chamber of Commerce (SCCC)).

To give you a brief overview of this afternoon where the exchanges were numerous, here are some of the “punch lines” that were heard:
🥊 2023 will be the year of Chinese consumers.
🥊 #covid19 is like a bad dream that is fading away.
🥊 The shrinking and aging of the Chinese population will have a huge impact.
🥊 Swiss companies short- and long-term confidence is back to the levels of 2016 – 2019, not yet as high as beginning of 2022.
🥊 Private sector hasn’t yet decided to #invest.
🥊 Achieving 5% growth [in China] in 2023 will depend on private consumption and investments.
🥊 One Globe, Two Systems.
🥊 Impressive growth in the number of electric cars within 2-3 years.
🥊 If you manage to be #competitive in China, then you will certainly manage to be competitive in other markets.
🥊 We can be cautiously optimistic about growth in China.

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