Tianjin, China — June 26, 2025 — Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) Dean and Dean’s Distinguished Chair Professor of Finance Li Haitao spoke at three flagship sessions at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2025 of the World Economic Forum, widely known as Summer Davos, in Tianjin, China, for the second year in a row, a testament to the school’s thought leadership and acknowledgement.
This year’s Summer Davos focused on entrepreneurship for a new era and dived into five core topics: outlook on China, investing in people and planet, new energy and materials, industries disrupted, and deciphering the world economy. As the most active Chinese business school this year at the Summer Davos, CKGSB contributed to the discourse on multiple meaningful topics including AI reshaping global competition and entrepreneurship in the new era.
In the high-profile session broadcast live globally on June 26, “Understanding China’s approach to AI,” Dean Li joined leading voices from academia, technology, and industry to explore China’s advantage in developing AI in the re-globalization backdrop, industries with the most potential to scale leveraging AI, and how AI can propel doing business for good by providing scarce resources.
“Only these two countries, China and the US, can lead AI revolution in the next decades,” emphasized Dean Li. “China has done lots of accumulation for decades with its infrastructure, data, talent, and market to establish its unique AI ecosystem. Beyond home appliances, smartphones, and automobiles, humanoid robots have the greatest potential to become a trillion-dollar industry in China. With our on-the-ground research and innovative programs, CKGSB aspires to systematically prepare business leaders for what the AI era requires for strategic architecture capabilities and new leadership skills.”
Moderated by renowned journalist Yang Lan, the panel also featured executives and scholars including Unitree Robotics Founder and CEO Wang Xingxing, Haier CEO Zhou Yunjie, USC Professor of Law Angela Zhang Huyue, and Workera Founder and CEO Kian Katanforoosh.
In addition, Dean Li delivered a keynote speech at the session around Gen Z consumers and had a fireside chat with Lorena James, Founder and CEO of Roundtree Resilience. He noted that Gen Z, as digital natives raised in climate crises and pandemic lockdowns, developed a sharp awareness of consumption’s socio-environmental impact, forming a sustainability-centered ethos. “With their robust purchasing power and authentic passion for sustainable practices and eco-conscious consumption, and as more start to evaluate companies’ sustainable commitment when making career decisions, Gen Z will drive companies to consider sustainability as they devise their core strategy,” he explained. “Companies must build a new collaboration structure where people at all levels get to affect decision making, contribute their own knowledge and jointly create value.” Dean Li also participated at the Global University Leaders Meeting alongside senior leaders from institutions including Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Australian National University, discussing how higher education institutions should shape the future of research through partnerships and continue to serve as engines of innovation.
CKGSB also co-hosted CKGSB’s 2025 Davos Night in collaboration with Tencent’s Tencent News, which featured our Professor of Finance Zhou Chunsheng and an exclusive group of business leaders from China’s tech sector.
Dean Li’s presence at this prominent conference underscored the school’s growing impact as a thought leader in global economic, educational, and technological dialogues across Asia.
