“We’re here for two reasons. You will see a group of Chinese entrepreneurs here; we are here for them because these new Chinese entrepreneurs and executives, they want to truly have an in-depth understanding of the world around them. And that’s why our faculty accompanied them as they were coming to Switzerland – they were in France last week. We had two groups looking into branding and innovation. These groups are now coming to Europe 10 times a year, because they really want to extend their programmes beyond China. So this is the first reason why we are here.

The second reason is to help non-Chinese executives better understand China so they can operate better inside China. That’s why last week we started our first Advanced Management programme based in Horgen, and for the first cohort we recruited 20 executives. Most of them are working with Chinese or working for, German, Swiss, or French companies acquired by the Chinese. We are here to increase China’s impact and help people here better understand China in order to take advantage of the ‘China growth’.

So what is the China growth? What is the potential of the Chinese market? If you read The Economist, you must have seen reference to the total size of the consumption market. Now for year 2018, this year, the Chinese consumption market will go above 5.7 trillion US dollars. So for the first time, the Chinese market will become the first consumption market in the world to surpass the US, which has been the number one consumption market ever since the Second World War. So that’s a very big change over the last 100 years. And better things are still to come, as you know, because China’s consumption market is still growing by about 7 to 8% a year, which means in 10 years the Chinese market alone will be 1.5 times bigger than the US market. And within that market, the most important part is something related to services.

One of our top colleagues is Sheng Songcheng, who was an important economist from China’s Central Bank – we just hired him two years ago to become our full-time professor. And his research is showing that the forthcoming dividend of reform in China will purely come from the service industry because this industry was still highly regulated. It was last impacted by the previous wave of economic reform led by Deng Xiaoping.  Which means you will see lots of things coming in innovation, not only in financial services but also in healthcare.

And healthcare is even more important for two reasons.  First: the money. As you know, in 10 years China will have over one billion middle class consumers, and if you have the money, then you will spend on your health. And another important thing is the ageing population issue in China. Next year, the whole family planning [project] will be abolished which means we truly enter into [an era of] the ageing population. This is a big signal, which means people will have the money and there will be the necessity to take care of them.

That’s why our entrepreneurs, 40 of them today in this room, are here really keen to learn from the Swiss innovation – both in technology but also in service – and to bring that knowledge back to China.  So that means there is a huge reciprocity and complementarity between the Swiss technology service and Chinese market – and Chinese money. If we could have a marriage, this will be the perfect couple. That’s why we are here to facilitate the dialogue, and my wish is for a very successful forum this afternoon. Thank you very much.”