7th YGL Annual Summit 2011– Dalian, China Blog 5

Day 2 of our 7^th Annual Meeting began with a conversation led by 4 Chinese YGLs who gave us their perspectives on quality growth in China. The session illuminated how we could better engage with China and work together to understand what quality growth means from an insiders viewpoint.

Feng Jun kicked off with these comments:

Quality growth in China is about creating win-win opportunities. Chinese are intent on creating value and sharing it with the value chain. Few outsiders truly understand China: it’s like a dumpling– there is an inside that you cannot see. The Italians just happen to put the inside, outside and called it pizza! That is the difference. The more we communicate, the better we can understand one another. 

Pan Haidong, CEO of the world’s largest Chinese encyclopedia, spoke next about quality growth. He runs a Chinese language Wikipedia and here’s what he had to say:

Social media and open source, like wikis, have the ability to add transparency and spread the idea of quality growth in China. The average age at his company (300 employees) is 25 and this generation thinks differently than YGLs. They are used to collaborating and believe that mass collaboration can change everything. The wiki technology from his company is used by 100,000 websites. Companies use it too. It has the ability to add solid value to the entire chain and enable each person to make a unique contribution to society.

Annabelle Long continued the conversation. She works for a media company, Bertlesman in China. She told us:

Media companies generally leverage growth, growth, growth, just like China has been doing for the past years. The result is that China now has first class infrastructure, but what of its thousands of years of culture and heritage?

It seems that it is time for China to slow down for the sake of its people, its democracy, and its cultural heritage. China needs to focus on sustainable growth. Quality growth can be gained by supporting local teachers and helping them re-integrate traditional Chinese arts and culture in the classroom. These efforts may seem small, but seemingly tiny things will have lasting impact. That is a definition of quality growth.

The final comments of the group revolved around the importance for China to grow as in a well-rounded, holistic manner. The Chinese YGLs indicated that new value systems are needed. Some people in China have a lot of money, but they don’t know how to spend it in a lasting way. They offered that one road to quality growth is to equip Chinese with knowledge of how to help their society grow harmoniously. This step will continue to put pressure on the government to open up and allow more freedom. The Facebook generation is going to demand it: they have different expectations about what constitutes an open society. They will have seen the world and how others live and they will demand balanced, quality growth.