Ambitious goals towards 2049, China can do it if it knows how to innovate

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China will be able to achieve the ambitious goals it has set between now and 2049, the date of the first hundred years since the founding of the People’s Republic, only if it knows how to make innovation the cornerstone of its development. This is the leitmotif of the round table that took place in the crowded Depero room of the Palazzo della Provincia, which saw Mario Boselli, president of the Italy China Council Foundation, Giuliano Noci pro-rector of the Milan Polytechnic, Junyi Bai professor and lawyer expert in Chinese commercial law and Gianluca Mirante, director of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council office in Milan, Malta, Cyprus and Greece.

You have to imagine

It was not an easy task for the speakers to identify in a matter of minutes the possible Chinese trajectory of the next quarter of a century, in the economy, in law, in internal politics and in the evolution of society. It is inevitable to start again from where it all began , or from the open-door policy of Deng Xiaoping, the small leader whose gigantic decisions, forty years later, made possible the construction of today’s China, a giant capable of contending for global leadership with the United States.

«Doing things quickly, on a large scale, with a style foreign to the fragmented European market, has attracted investments – says Giuliano Noci, father of the spin-off of the Milan Polytechnic in China. Getting rich today is fine, but in moderation. We need to operate on large companies, let us remember that 70% are private, moving from the platform economy to the manufacturing one. It may seem strange, but from a Confucian point of view there is a strong industrial policy in the pipeline that rests on that collective power that produces innovation. It will be necessary to see if the state economy will be able to look at the same objective with the same dedication».

Mario Boselli and in the background Giuliano Noci

The role of the law

Then there is China’s ability/need to modernize its legal structures. «The key date, if we have to talk about dates, is 1978. Investments, the possibility of setting up companies with foreign partners, all of this has become a driving force for progress and economic growth -. says Junyi Bai. But now an upgrade of the entire system has already been started, a new platform launched in early 2022 which will certainly produce long-term effects”.

More dates, yes: 2047 will be the year of the complete handover of Hong Kong to mainland China. Gianluca Mirante points out: «Hong Kong is becoming the bridge to China also with regard to China itself, let us remember that so far 70% of traffic still passes through the former British colony. As? There is the GBA strategy, Great bay area, Hong Kong, Macao plus nine GuangDong municipalities. This integration is crucial for the future of China, at every level: skills, talents, start-ups».