Foreign firm execs keen on China's AI boom

Q2 "New quality productive forces "is widely seen as key to helping China achieve industrial upgrade and "high-quality development". How can your company help cultivate such forces in China?

HU: As an international financial institution operating in the Chinese mainland for 35 years, we leverage our unique position to offer international investors access to China's emerging sectors and companies, and to support innovative Chinese enterprises seeking to expand internationally. This is a crucial opportunity for UBS in serving the development of new quality productive forces. Leveraging UBS' OneBank strength, we connect private capital with Chinese companies in emerging sectors to help them secure early-stage funding. We also facilitate high-quality Chinese companies to tap into the international market through capital market activities such as IPOs. Recently, UBS has successfully supported Guming Holdings' and Mixue Group's listing in Hong Kong, the two largest primary IPOs in Hong Kong so far this year.

RATHNINDE: With 140 years of innovation experience, Johnson Controls actively responds to market needs and contributes to the advancement of new quality productive forces in various industries. We are deeply committed to R&D, investing significantly in developing cutting-edge solutions tailored to the evolving needs of key industries. Our end-to-end building solutions support growth sectors such as data centers, new energy and pharmaceuticals, empowering the facilities to meet demand for stable operations, energy saving and sustainability, which will ultimately advance new quality productive forces. We keep striving to establish and develop a local ecosystem for smart cities. Johnson Controls' partners are found throughout the entire industry chain, including Shanghai Electric, Alibaba and others. We have consistently and actively been establishing more partnership with local enterprises to drive sustainable development.

XIE: We are encouraged to see that the steel industry, a very traditional sector, is evolving into an increasingly high-end, intelligent and greener sector. In recent years, while continuously supplying high-quality iron ore products to China, we have developed innovative decarbonization solutions, such as iron ore briquettes, Tecnored, and Mega Hubs, to support the steel industry's green transition. Last year, we also donated $5.81 million to Central South University to establish a joint laboratory for low carbon and hydrogen metallurgy. This initiative is aimed at advancing fundamental theoretical research and the development of key technologies in hydrogen metallurgy and other cutting-edge metallurgical processes, thereby helping the Chinese steel sector accelerate the development of new quality productive forces.

XU: Sustainable development is the main theme of the future civil aviation industry and surely is one of the new quality productive forces in the aviation sector. Replacing traditional fossil fuels with sustainable aviation fuel is currently a relatively mature solution for carbon reduction in the aviation industry. China has huge advantages in raw material acquisition, industrial foundation, united governance and great executive ability. Airbus has been applying and promoting the use of SAF in China since 2022, and we have started to use SAF for test flights and delivery flights in Tianjin. Airbus is also ambitious to work with stakeholders to build the SAF industry in China to promote the large-scale production and use of SAF.