context: This address is the PRC's highest-level, most direct rebuttal yet of the Western 'overcapacity/PRC Shock 2.0' narrative. It follows a sequence of moves: the EU's October 2024 anti-subsidy EV tariffs shifting to minimum-price talks in January 2026, plus the PRC's early-June Outbound Investment Regulations and 23 June government-procurement revision: together an 'opening posture plus narrative counter-attack' package. The venue is itself a signal: Summer Davos in Dalian, organised under the National Development and Reform Commission, is a home stage the PRC actively cultivates for its external economic narrative.
Premier Li Qiang's 李强 opening address at the 17th Summer Davos (Dalian, theme 'scaling innovation') argues innovation-driven growth is the key to the PRC's long-term prospects, directly rebuts the Western 'PRC Shock 2.0' narrative with 'PRC Opportunity 2.0', insists export competitiveness comes from technology not subsidies, and pledges wider opening
- a few hard data points (rest was 'stable/new/vibrant/integrated' framing, omitted)
- Q1 growth 5 percent, Q2 said to hold up
- January–May import growth 20.5 percent, above exports; zero tariffs applied to 63 countries
- end-May AI token usage reached hundreds of trillions daily, claimed world-leading
- direct rebuttal of 'PRC Shock 2.0' (the substantive part)
- flatly denies the subsidy thesis: 'competitiveness is not, as some speculate, mainly from government subsidies; we couldn't afford to subsidise anyway'
- offers 'PRC Opportunity 2.0' as counter-framing: the PRC shifting from providing a 'market dividend' to also providing an 'innovation dividend'
- 14,000 new foreign-invested firms in scitech research and technical services in 2025, up 27.2 percent y-o-y
- open-source narrative: the PRC's open-source AI models cumulatively downloaded over 10 billion times; controlled-fusion and quantum facilities opened globally; Tiangong station to host foreign astronauts
- positions on global innovation cooperation
- opposes 'wall-building' and 'technology blockades', backs interconnection and an open world economy
- 'technology for good', balancing development and security, participating responsibly in AI governance
- pledges to foreign investors
- wider market access, full national treatment for foreign firms, first-class business environment
- largely reaffirmations, still a gap from foreign firms' actual concerns