The Zhongguancun Forum, which kicked off in Beijing on Thursday, has pooled insightful punditry for multi-pronged frontline sci-tech innovation, echoing its theme of "Innovating for a Better World".
The forum is designated to be a platform for pooling wisdom and sparking ideas with fortified alignment and esteemed guests and speakers, including government officials, industry leaders and renowned academics, shared their insightful visions about the future of technology and entrepreneurship at the opening ceremony.
Many attendees believe that the rapid development and application of artificial intelligence technology are further accelerating technological innovation across various fields.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, China's annual research and development expenditure exceeded 3.3 trillion yuan (about 515.625 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023, marking a year-on-year growth of 8.1 percent.
"Over the past century, the methods, inventions, and research achievements of structural biology have propelled our understanding of life to unprecedented heights. Nowadays, leveraging AI to empower and utilizing vast structural databases for drug design is no longer empty talk," said Yan Ning, an academician from Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
"New technology opens new possibilities for different kinds of science. It's really not many countries that contribute to innovation these days. The Chinese people are more likely to embrace technology and just figure out how to use it," said Piero Scaruffi, founder of Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (SVAIRI).
Spanning five days from Thursday to Monday, this year's forum will host nearly 120 activities.
The forum will focus on artificial intelligence, life sciences, new materials, carbon peak, carbon neutrality, medical health, clean energy and other fields, and build a trading and sharing platform for more than 3,000 scientific and technological achievements from more than 40 countries and regions.
Zhongguancun Forum pools punditry for multi-pronged frontline innovation
The universal "reciprocal tariffs" imposed by the United States signals a decline in the U.S. economic dominance and dollar hegemony, as the country is attempting to extract excessive financial benefits from its trading partners, according to economists, who warn the Trump administration is playing a "dangerous game".
U.S. President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order on the so-called "reciprocal tariffs," imposing a 10-percent "minimum baseline tariff" before unveiling higher rates on certain trading partners. The policy sent shockwaves throughout the global economy and triggered panic on financial markets, with analysts warning of significant risks and dire economic consequences.
In an interview with the China Global Television Network (CGTN), Hong Hao, chief economist of the GROW Investment Group, a Shanghai-based hedge fund, said the tariffs reflect Trump's strategy to extract economic benefits from trading partners, particularly viewing China as a significant competitor. "Trump really believes that the trade terms with the trading partners have been unfair to the U.S., and as a result, the U.S. manufacturing sector has been hollowed out. Therefore, the U.S. is paying an excessive price for globalization, and now, it's time to pay back. I think, from this angle, he is trying to extract economic rent from its trading partners, and also he is trying to see China as one of the major U.S. rivals at this juncture. So, I think, as a result, he is playing a very dangerous game. And, as you can see, it's political theater in the sense that he is trying to dramatize the extreme pressure, so that he can get excessive rent from the opponent," he said
Trump's unilateral imposition of tariffs has eroded global confidence in the U.S. and its dollar's status, leading many to state that the American hegemony may not persist, according to Josef Gregory Mahoney, a professor of politics and international relations at East China Normal University.
"The U.S. economy is at an inflection point. There is a moment where the previous strategies being used to sustain American hegemony were no longer working. And, it's only a matter of time before the U.S. position erodes, given the fact that it's been a house of cards built on the dollar supremacy. And a lot of people don't see that as having a brighter future. This has moved past the theater stage and has moved really directly into one in which no one really has confidence in the U.S. anymore. No one has confidence in the dollar. No one has confidence in the U.S. being committed to the multilateral system, to global trade and so forth and so on," he said.
Trump playing "dangerous game" as tariff measures signal decline in U.S. dollar hegemony: economists
