China News Agency, Davos, January 17 (Reporter De Yongjian) After three years of interruption due to the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (Davos Forum) opened in winter as usual on the 17th. At the time of great change, it hopes to "strengthen cooperation in a divided world".
On the morning of the 17th local time, Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, announced the opening of the forum.
After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in 2020, the Davos Forum will be held online in 2021, and will be held in May in 2022. This year, it finally returned to "on track" and will be held in Davos as usual in the middle of winter in January.
Facing the current geopolitics, energy, climate change, food security and other multiple crises, the theme of this forum is "Strengthening Cooperation in a Divided World".
According to the data released by the forum, in addition to United Nations Secretary-General Guterres, German Chancellor Scholz, South Korean President Yoon Seok-yue, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other political figures, the forum attracted more than 1,500 presidents and executives from 700 companies. Yes, the number hit a record high.
During the 4-day conference, the forum will focus on a series of topics such as energy, climate change, investment, trade and infrastructure, cutting-edge technology and even geopolitical cooperation.
On the eve of the opening of the forum, Schwab said that due to multiple factors such as politics, economy, and society, the divisions between the world and countries have intensified; in order to fundamentally solve the problem of mutual trust fading, it is necessary to strengthen the cooperation between the government and enterprises, and to recognize "Leave no one behind".
Although it opened in winter as usual, the number of participating companies hit a new high, but the increasingly serious livelihood problems made the forum's atmosphere hard to be optimistic.
On January 11, the World Economic Forum released the "Global Risks Report 2023", indicating that the rising cost of living has become the most serious short-term risk in the world in order of risk severity, followed by natural disasters and extreme weather, and geoeconomic conflicts rank third.
Among the long-term risks, the top three are all related to climate, namely failure to mitigate climate change, failure to adapt to climate change, natural disasters and extreme weather.
Before and after the opening of the Davos Forum, it coincided with the historically warm winter in many parts of Europe. For this reason, environmental groups have increased their criticism of the Davos Forum, especially criticizing the participants for "taking private jets to discuss climate change." Hard to convince.
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