On September 18-20, 2018 Summer Davos Forum was held in Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center of Tianjin. With the theme “Shaping an Innovation-oriented Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, this year’s session invited 2,000-plus guests, including CEOs of developing companies and Fortune Global 500 companies from 100-odd countries and regions, global youth leaders, key political leaders,scholars, social leaders, media leaders, and young scientists.

Sustained Growth of China’s New Economic Drivers

Also called “Annual Meeting of the New Champions”, Summer Davos Forum is a flagship brand of the World Economic Forum. Its objective is to bring developing companies worldwide together and enable them to look forward into the future of industry and commerce development, and engage in dialog with global top 1,000 companies and national and regional governments. The forum functions as an enabling platform of interaction and cooperation for old and new comers, and for both western and oriental countries.

Li Keqiang, Premier of the State Council, pointed out in his speech at this year’s session that, China’s economy as a whole has maintained progress while ensuring stability, especially, new development drivers are growing in a sustained manner, and the economic fundamentals are sound. Meanwhile, the obvious changes in international economic and trade environment will inevitably affect China’s economy as it has deeply integrated with world economy. China has the determination and confidence that it can maintain stable progress. As long as we use new methods, new measures, and new drivers to upgrade traditional drivers, and seek common development and work together to overcome difficulties, we will realize better development. Premier Li Keqiang’s speech set the tone for the integrated development of China’s economy and world economy, and also encouraged Chinese enterprises and entrepreneurs.

YOFC: Embracing Innovation and Going Global

As a leader in optical fiber and cable industry, Dr. Zhuang Dan, Executive Director and President of YOFC, attended the 2018 Summer Davos Forum. He exchanged ideas with other industrial elites on strategic opportunities YOFC and China’s optical communication industry face in the global trend of digital transformation.

Based on concepts of previous sessions, “innovation” became the key topic of this year’s forum again. The topics of the sub-forums included: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Driving Force of Economic Development, Global Value Chain Reconstruction and the Selection of Multilateral Cooperation Approach”, “40 Years of China’s Reform and Opening up”, “Building Innovation Path for the ‘Belt and Road’”, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Formation of Innovation-oriented Industries”, and others. These topics encompassed all aspects of innovation in China and beyond.

The innovation-driven development path of YOFC coincided with these topics. Over the past 30 years since its inception, YOFC has based its efforts on innovation, and striven to intensity technological innovation and pursue intelligent manufacturing. While powering global information construction and digital transformation, YOFC had grown into the largest supplier of optical fiber perform, fiber, and cable worldwide. Today, key production equipment and raw materials used in YOFC all come from independent production. This means that YOFC has shifted from “trading technology with market” to “trading market with technology” and realized independent production.

As China seeks to expand opening up and foreign cooperation, a greater stage has been created for YOFC to establish overseas presence. YOFC sees internationalization as a key development strategy. Following a customer-oriented approach, it has won the favor of operators with quality products and services. While fully releasing capacity, YOFC has secured many large orders in home and overseas markets, thus realizing sustained business growth. Since going public in Hong Kong in December, 2014, YOFC has worked to expand overseas market, and invested and built factories in Myanmar, Indonesia, and South Africa. In recent years, its overseas revenues have maintained a double-digit growth. In July this year, YOFC made it to Shanghai Stock Exchange, becoming the first enterprise in China’s optical fiber and cable industry that went public in both Shanghai Stock Exchange and Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Powered by capital market, YOFC has accelerated its pace of going global in responding to the Belt and Road initiative. It will boost the information and digital development of other countries with top-notch products and services, and build itself into a world-leading optical communication brand.