Foreign participants laud China's reform and opening-up at Summer Davos

As the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2018, or Summer Davos Forum, kicked off on Tuesday, more than 2,500 participants from over 100 countries have gathered in North China's Tianjin, making it the forum's largest meeting after the annual meeting in Switzerland's Davos-Klosters.

Among the forum's varied sessions, the session "China's Opening-Up: 40 Years On" held on Tuesday received great attention. Five foreign participants shared their views with China Daily Website on the forum and the achievements in China since the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy 40 years ago.

Fabian von Heimburg, co-founder and managing director of Hotnest Technology Ltd, a German-Chinese joint venture that provides artificial intelligence data service for China's media and advertising industry, said it is amazing to meet people from all different countries in China and the meetings are also a big sign of China's opening-up.

"More and more people are trying to cooperate with China. China is also trying to cooperate with a lot of other countries," he said.

Heimburg, who came to China for the first time in 2004, said the development of the country is so fast that China is already leading the world in e-commerce, fintech and artificial intelligence and it is fascinating to see and be part of it.

"Basically 40 years ago there were very few cars, very few machines in China, but now China is competing with US and Europe in a lot of the most advanced areas in the world. So from having almost nothing to being one of the most developed countries on earth, I think that is a tremendous achievement," Heimburg said.

He thinks Germany can benefit in many ways from China's massive and developed market.

In his article published recently called "Here are 3 lessons Europe can learn from China's flourishing start-ups", he wrote that the impact of China's opening and development can be felt in every industry, especially the start-up and venture capital sectors.

He said Europe should learn from the fast growth of China's start-up ecosystem by properly financing its start-up ecosystem, creating dominant players that support the local ecosystem and developing a clear industrial policy for the digital sector.