​

The world is changing dramatically, at different levels and dimensions. Nationalism, divergence, and technology intelligence seem to start influencing the world,  even though the fundamental relationship (at the individual, economic and business level) are interdependent and positive. People, business, individuals from various sectors and each corner of the world are questioning what we are doing but at the same time enthusiastic to the positive consequences of the changing, such as more opportunities being created. Making an effort to collaborate, trying to learn from each other, and doing more self-critical thinking (rather than being critical to others) become the keywords from this forum.  In general, we learned quite a lot from this forum, including the points as follows: 

​

1.    The questions and fear/ threat that Europe felt about China come from our incompetence and incapability to understand the changing world, Europe, and China’s mechanism of development. Naming China as a threat should be switched to questioning ourselves firstly, and consciously reflecting what we can do better and especially play a better role in the world. 

​

2.    Numbers (statistics) do matter, and we need to learn to read the stories and the background of the stories by looking into the numbers (statistics). European statistics should be combined with China statistics/numbers. Single-data-source will not make us understand the world better. 

​

3.    GDP growth index is a self-killing index. We should look into a future-oriented sustainability index and apply it into the social-economic development. We need to try to use SDG as goals to guild our behaviors and sustain our planet. 

​

4.    The big engine of the Western World has consisted of capitalism and democracy; however, this engine has started to dysfunction. What happened now in the world--Economic nationalism---is a lose-lose formula. What innovation/new formula shall we do to make the world better? We need to think more about it. 

​

5.    Right now, experts usually do not do things right. We are right now in the political climate change. National interests are difficult to be defined, and we should be wise to fight against /for such an interest. 

​

6.    The problem of the world is not China has a plan (building such as Belt and Road). The problem is the rest of the world do not have a plan. We cannot only sit, see around, wait, and question others’ plans. In the past, we Europeans had plans; now we don’t. Now please try to do something, rather than Brexit. 

​

7.    Teaching listening is critical. We need to learn how to listen. We need to learn to listen to people especially those who might not communicate in the way we do or we were used to doing. 

​

8.    We need to learn from China “If you want to become rich, you have to be on the road (build road) first.”  BRI can be a tool, like a hammer that can either break our head or can help us achieve goals.  It only matters how we make use of this tool. We do not like to be “Europe does what the Americans told to do.” We do whatever we want and what is good for us.

​

​

​

The Executive Board of Identitat Global Forum 

March 8th,2019, Zurich