Chongqing- As an important sub-event of the 3rd Western China International Fair for Investment and Trade (WCIFIT), the Asia-Enterprise of Tomorrow (AEOT) took place at the Chongqing International Expo Center on May 21st.  Before the start of the AEOT, iChongqing had an exclusive interview with Yu Bo, PwC General Business Advisory Leader, who was also one of the speakers of AEOT.

One of the focuses of AEOT was the Asia CEO Survey issued by PwC. In this interview, Mr. Yu gave a short introduction. He said PwC had done the CEO surveys for over 24 years and the survey would give a snapshot of CEOs’ perspectives on economic status and main challenges. The survey issued at AEOT showed changes in CEOs’ sentiments regarding their biggest challenges. For example, trade conflicts in the past year topped the list, while the pandemic had become the biggest challenge this year. Therefore one of the highlights of the survey issued at AEOT involved the pandemic which on one hand brought lots of challenges to traditional industries like tourism. But on the other hand, many industries had seen fast growth like the Internet industry during the pandemic era. CEOs from such kinds of industries held very positive attitudes toward their development. Another highlight was that some CEOs wanted to invest heavily in digital transformation. In his opinion, generally Asian CEOs were more confident in the economy in 2021 than that with last year.

In this interview, Mr. Yu said the AEOT was a must event. Last year the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or known as R.C.E.P strengthened the position of China and helped China be integrated into the Asian business circle further. One of the topics at the AEOT would involve R.C.E.P.  He hoped Chongqing would play a significant role in it.

Regarding the development of Chongqing, he said the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle provided more coordinated approaches and in his opinion, this circle would become the 4^th economic cluster of China in the future. Meanwhile, Chongqing’s status in West China was so significant that many multinational companies who had set up headquarters in Beijing and Shanghai had expanded into Chongqing. He thought if Chongqing provided more stimulus plans for foreign investments, more foreign companies would move in. In the future, he believed the smart manufacture, the construction of Western Science City, and Liangjiang New Area would provide stimulus in Chongqing’s development.