Chinese companies play an an important role in ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries' digital development, said an expert on the sidelines of the ongoing 2024 Summer Davos on Wednesday.
In an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), Neeraj Aggarwal, the Asia Pacific regional chair of the Boston Consulting Group, pointed out that the ASEAN economy is undeniably shaped by a multitude of influences, among which China holds significant sway.
"ASEAN economy is influenced by many countries. China has had many companies which have played a very important role in those. So China has many roles to play. One is, you take the big companies from China -- Alibaba, Tencent -- they are very active in this part of the world, in terms of influencing talent, in terms of influencing consumers. So that's one. Second, China has through its multiple initiatives been an important driver for infrastructure building in many parts of these countries. So that's another. And I think a lot of people have close ties with China, right? I mean going back culturally and others. So I think that influences people as well. I think a large part of the population has historic ties with that. So I think there is a lot of win-win. And China has been an early embracer of the digital technologies. I think ASEAN countries can learn a lot from that," Aggarwal said.
He also noted that ASEAN trade plays crucial role in global economic growth and contributes skilled talents to the world.
"The world GDP is expected to grow at about 3 percent thereabouts, give or take a little bit. ASEAN economy will grow between 4.5 to 5 percent. So that's a sizable uptick on that. It's about 700 million people with the total GDP of about 3.5 trillion U.S. dollars today. But if you start doing the extra maths, that quickly starts adding up. So I think they are in a very important, as I said earlier, they're in a very important field spot, economically and demographically, and also in many industries -- consumer electronics, packaged goods, oil and gas, and green industries. In many sectors, ASEAN countries, agriculture have a very important role to play," Aggarwal said.
"Global trade is going to grow slower than global GDP for the first time, this is actually a big change. Trade used to always grow faster than GDP for the longest time. Now trade is going to grow slightly less than GDP, but ASEAN countries are actually going to grow trade much faster than GDP growth. So I think one important role which ASEAN countries have is, and we've done this modeling as BCG over the next 10 years, it's to be an important part of the trade flows globally. They need to make it easy. They need to make it easy on the infrastructure side, the physical infrastructure side, the digital infrastructure side, and they need to make it easy to cooperate among themselves to be able to do a part of those trade flows. So I think that is a key role. There's also another role which I have not talked about is talent upskilling. I think there's a lot of room for talent unlearning and learning new things in ASEAN countries. I think that should be an important driver and not just the top talent on the pyramid, but a lot of the middle part of the pyramid as well needs to be re-skilled," he said.
The three-day event, formally known as the World Economic Forum's 15th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, is gathering some 1,600 leading figures from the public and private sectors across nearly 80 countries and regions to jointly explore new drivers and pathways for global economic growth.
Chinese tech giants drive ASEAN's digital boom: expert
Chinese tech giants drive ASEAN's digital boom: expert
