What to expect from the 'Summer Davos' AMNC; and what the West gets wrong about China

Jen Zhu Scott, Founding Partner of IN. Capital: If you approach AI in a very innovative way, you could change the world without having a big brand, without having a star team that's already very famous, very well-known. And I think that's the true power of the China ecosystem.

Robin Pomeroy, host Radio Davos: Welcome to Radio Davos, the podcast from the World Economic Forum that looks at the biggest challenges and how we might solve them. This week as the Forum is about to host the ‘Summer Davos’ in China, we take a look at the big issues on the agenda.

Mirek Dusek, Managing Director, World Economic Forum: The DNA of this meeting is around innovation, and since we are in Asia, in China, this meeting has also always been quite useful in terms of deciphering the fast-evolving landscape on the innovation front in Asia and in China.

Robin Pomeroy: On this special episode, produced in collaboration with Caixin Global, this Chinese-born entrepreneur gives us an insider’s view of what we need to know about China and its tech sector.

Jen Zhu Scott: Getting to know the nuance will serve anybody who needs to understand what's truly happening in the tech world and in economy at large

Robin Pomeroy: What should we make of Chinese genAI company DeepSeek? And why should its emergence not have come as such a surprise?

Jen Zhu Scott: This is not the first time the world was surprised by China's tech achievements. EV was a surprise. R1 was a surprise. Huawei's multiple achievements was a suprise. China's green tech entire ecosystem is a surprise.

Robin Pomeroy: I’m Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum, and with this look at China, tech and the Summer Davos, in collaboration with Caixin Global…

Jen Zhu Scott: I think instead of US versus China, we should talk more about US plus China.

Robin Pomeroy: This is Radio Davos

Welcome to Radio Davos. And on this episode, we're looking ahead to the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions, AMNC, an event held in Tianjin, China, in a few days from as we record this. It is sometimes known as the Summer Davos, and to tell us what it is, I'm joined by Mirek Dusek from the World Economic Forum. Hi Mirek, how are you?

Mirek Dusek: I'm good. Great to be here.

Robin Pomeroy: Great to have you. Tell us what is it you do at the World Economic Forum.

Mirek Dusek: I'm responsible for our large scale gatherings like Davos or like our Summer Davos that is upcoming and I'm also responsible for business relations.

Robin Pomeroy: Mirek, what is the AMNC, this meeting in Tianjin, China?

Mirek Dusek: It's 1,500 leaders from around the world getting together, focusing on what entrepreneurship can do to relaunch growth in this new economic era.

It is really looking at this new economic era, new economic geography that is emerging with the shifts that we're all seeing all around us, technological, geopolitical, geoeconomic. But really taking more of a can-do attitude, if you will, in terms of recognising that there is a lot of entrepreneurial activity, that a lot of businesses are pivoting, seeing maybe also opportunities.

And it's also focusing a lot on innovation. Again, the DNA of this meeting is around innovation. And since we are in Asia, in China, this meeting has also always been quite useful in terms of deciphering the fast-evolving landscape on the innovation front in Asia and in China.

Robin Pomeroy: We'll be hearing an interview in a moment on this episode focusing on China and on artificial intelligence. It's still on everyone's minds, isn't it, AI, right now?

Mirek Dusek: No, it's fascinating. It's obviously, DeepSeek did create this environment where people suddenly woke up to the strength of the innovation ecosystem in China, in Asia, or at least they woke up to the need to pay attention.

And so what we are trying to do again through this meeting is to bring a lot of the people that are actually doing these things in the private sector in these geographies, and sharing that insight and knowledge from their business.

And of course we will have a lot of people coming from Europe, from the US, from Latin America, from Africa. So it's really a global meeting where a lot leaders can then exchange with innovators in Asia, in China, around AI, but also around the energy transition. So a lot experimentation, innovation will be taking place at that meeting.

Robin Pomeroy: Where do you see the position of China right now in the world? You mentioned the technological advances, DeepSeek. Also, though, we have this rivalry between China and the United States. How are you seeing that? And do you think that and the kind of geopolitical situation will be a major theme of the meeting in Tianjin?

Mirek Dusek: We'll definitely have, and you need to have, dialogue and you to share insight on what is taking place geopolitically and geoeconomically in the world.

We see these shifts, a lot of people will say that they have changed the world economy, so we are entering, some would say, a new era for the world's economy. So you really need to pay attention to that and we all know that there are quite a few developments with regard to trade, with regard to industrial policy, et cetera.

So absolutely, we will have industry ministers, trade ministers, and others really looking at what is happening, what is taking place within the trade realm, looking at not only, let's say, the more temporal things, but also what are possibly the end games, what are the, where we are headed, what are destinations in terms of the geoeconomic picture that is emerging.

But as I mention also it is about how do you have agency in this fast evolving environment and the point is that we want to make sure that that platform is used to maximise that agency of leaders from wherever they are geographically or within society or within industry and so we will see a lot of what does it mean for innovation, how do we do the energy transition within this economic environment. How do we do research within this geoeconomic environment?

So yes, it's going to be part and parcel of the proceedings, but I would say that the tenor would be more around how do you have agency in this emerging landscape.

Robin Pomeroy: Well, we look forward to all the discussions there. People can follow it on the website, links in the show notes. We'll be doing interviews for Radio Davos and for all the other social media we put out from AMNC, the Summer Davos, in Tianjin.

We're now going to hear an interview I did in collaboration with Caixin Media about China and about AI. But for now, Mirek, thanks very much for joining us on Radio Davo.

Mirek Dusek: Thanks for having me.

Robin Pomeroy: We're doing a jointly produced podcast with Caixin Media and joining me as the co-host of this episode is Li Xin, the managing editor of Caixin Global. Hi, Li Xin, how are you?

Li Xin, Managing Editor, Caixin Global: Hi, Robin. Thanks for having me here.

Robin Pomeroy: Tell us, before we introduce our guest, tell us who you are and what Caixin Media is.

Li Xin: Caixin Media, what we see, the catchphrase will be, we are the equivalent of Wall Street Journal or FT in China or coming out of China. So we are an independent professional news media covering finance and business. And my role at Caixin is on the Caixin Global, which is the English arm of it. And if we use one number, then Caixin has one million subscribers in total. That makes us probably the largest subscriber-based news media out of Asia.

Robin Pomeroy: Well, and for your listeners, then I'll just tell people who I am.

Li Xin: Yes.

Robin Pomeroy: Radio Davos is the weekly podcast from the World Economic Forum, which, as I just said, looks at the biggest challenges facing the world and how we might be able to solve them. So that's everything from the environment, economic issues, health care, technology, the future of jobs, everything. I think we're going to be talking a lot about technology today because we have a guest. Perhaps, Li Xin, you could introduce our guest for this episode.

Li Xin: The guest is actually a very familiar face and voice to audiences and readers of Caixin, Jen Zhu Scott, and my trusted source for anything technology. Well, Jen is a familiar face on a lot of news media commenting on technology development on China, and she's also one of the founders at IN. Capital based out of Hong Kong. Hey Jen, good to see you.

Jen Zhu Scott: Hey Xin, how are you? Hey Robin, thank you so much for having me.

Robin Pomeroy: Hi Jen, great to meet you. How do you describe yourself? How would you introduce yourself to people who've never met you before?

Jen Zhu Scott: I'm an investor, entrepreneur, I was born and brought up in mainland China but lived everywhere in the world and studied everywhere and absolutely privileged to, much like Xin, have the insights of what's really happening in China while appreciating the global context, and tech, definitely, as my profession, as well as probably the hot topic that's transforming not only just our life but also geopolitics, has I'm sure keeping all our minds busy including mine.

Robin Pomeroy: Well, you are the perfect guest then for this episode, which from my perspective is raising the curtain on an event the World Economic Forum is holding in Tianjin in China at the end of June, 2025. It's called the Annual Meeting of the New Champions. It is a big meeting of government leaders, business leaders, academics, civil society. Very much like we have in Davos in January. This is with a bit of an Asia focus, but a global meeting. But it's really great a few days before we head there and I'm going there, to get your perspective about China, how China sees the world, how the world sees China. Particularly about tech. I mean, this is a very broad question, but let's just start here. What does the world get wrong about China?

Jen Zhu Scott: This is a very big question, and there are so many ways to tackle this, but, um what I found is that, uh, often, um in the West that people use a very Westernised lens to see China. And China, similar as any other large economies, there are. So many companies run by so many individuals and the domestic competition in many ways more fierce than any other economy on this planet. And yet, often you see media and see people how people talk about China tech industry often regarded as a one entity. If DeepSeek did something, that's China did something, if Huawei did something that's, China did something. And in reality, all these companies and founders and sometimes co-founders of the same company, they're so different, they're so individual.

So getting to know the nuance will serve anybody who needs to understand what's truly happening in the tech world and in economy at large is very essential.

Robin Pomeroy: You mentioned DeepSeek there. This, as we record this in June, is a few months after the world got to hear about this company. Why was the world so surprised when DeepSeek kind of emerged? Just remind us what DeepSeek is and tell us why we were so surprised by it and maybe why we shouldn't have been.

Jen Zhu Scott: Sure, DeepSeek is a Hangzhou-based AI startup that's founded by Liang Wenfeng, who is a bit of a math genius, and he runs a quant fund, where he make most of his fortune, and also he donates most of this fortune very quietly as well, through his quant fund.

I'm actually probably one of the first individuals to start talking about DeepSeek. DeepSeak R1 shocked the world in January this year, but I probably started to write and talk about Deepseek maybe 18 months, 12 months before that because fundamentally when you look at all the large language model that's taking the world by a storm, all of them building on a very kind of brute force. And we're talking about tens of billions of capital. With unlimited GPU, compute resource, unlimited data, scraping the entire internet. Unlimited capital also means your access to talents as well.

And yet, I often compare that human intelligence with machine intelligence in terms of efficiency. And this might give you a bit of light because if you think about human brain, we consume 30 watts. And yet, we process 100 trillion parameters at any given time. And the most powerful large language model that's published that we know is ChatGPT-4 which was trained on about one trillion parameters. And that consumes about half gigawatt to one gigawatt a month. And yet we use 30 watts. And that can barely, you know, light a lightbulb and yet we are able to process.

So there's a massive discrepancy gap between efficiency of two types of very different intelligence. Therefore, a natural conclusion I had is, I think in February last year, I wrote an article on my LinkedIn page arguing that Nvidia's valuation fundamentally was wrong because Everybody was assuming AI will only head to the direction where you use this kind of brute force piling on compute and data and energy.

And there are two ways to make AI very powerful. One is the first one that we have seen both in the US and China, especially in the US side because there's no limitation in terms of the compute, but also a few large, you know, big techs in China using this approach. The second way to make AI very powerful is you actually code your AI to the teeth, that every bit of GPU capacity has been completely utilised, and therefore you can achieve [it with] very little compute, very little data, and therefore very little capital, as we have seen with R1 this year.

So I think why the world is surprised, number one, this is not the first time the world was surprised by China's tech achievement. EV was a surprise. R1 was a surprise. Huawei's multiple achievements was a suprise. China's green tech entire ecosystem is a surprise.

So when such massive population consistently surprise by something, it proves one thing, that the world is consistently underestimating what's really happening in China with underappreciating.

So that's number one. Number two was also the entire world was so obsessed with this kind of a brute force, large tech, very heavy capex approach and think that's the only way to achieve very powerful AI. And yet R1 basically, you know, we're talking about 5-6% of the cost...

Robin Pomeroy: R1 is the name of DeepSeek's...

Jen Zhu Scott: Model. So, of course, this is why Wall Street has such extreme reaction when R1 was released, right? And I hope after this, nobody should feel surprised about any of the technology that comes out of China that's very impressive. And yet I can guarantee you people will constantly feeling surprised.

Robin Pomeroy: I know Li Xin has a question on this, but I just want to ask kind of a follow up there.

From the Western perspective, certainly from the US perspective, there was an effort to limit the chips going into China and that was expected to slow down AI development. You also mentioned though, Jen, the energy consumption. So those are two things, aren't they? How many chips you can use and how much energy you're using to run the chips. I mean, was it kind of necessity being the mother of invention here, that a Chinese company had to find a way of doing this with less compute and less energy, or am I missing something here?

Jen Zhu Scott: I think necessity definitely played a huge role for a lot of players in China's ecosystem to become much more efficient and self-reliant as well.

I understand from the US point of view, as you have mentioned, China's tech rise was a total surprise and this is a very comprehensive challenge to the US dominance in this industry. Having this kind of reaction to limit access in the short term, it did create a lot of pain for many participants in Chinese ecosystem.

Although, if we observe the pattern, what happened with any of those kind of export embargo, et cetera, it basically creates this China's own semiconductor industry.

We're looking at, for example, Horizon Robotics. I remember I saw Horizon Robotics in very, very early stage. I thought there was no chance for Chinese semiconductor for EV type of company to be able to survive because you can buy so easily in China. This was before 2018. And yet, what happened in Trump's first term essentially enabled companies like Horizon Robotics to be very, very successful.

Now we're looking at Huawei's Ascend 100, and even [Nvidia CEO] Jensen Huang started to say that Ascend 100s probably can compete with H100, which is a huge deal. And it's not only just the final product, now China's building this entire ecosystem to produce its own GPUs as well.

And I think it's going to be a matter of time for the China ecosystem come up with something not necessarily better than the US, but good enough to make sure the Chinese tech companies who were forbidden to access advanced chip in the US produced by US companies be able to stay competitive. And I that's very, very possible. And we are seeing that happening already.

Robin Pomeroy: Li Xin, I'll pass the mic to you.

Li Xin: Jen made some really good comments, and I like that if you constantly have surprises, that means you constantly underestimate.

My question is more about a more comprehensive view, a big picture about who are the players in China's AI scene, because you have the state industrial policies. You do have a lot of state players, including some research institutes. You have tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent, which you just mentioned, and you have the AI companies. Many of them are based in Hangzhou. And you have the quant funds. Out of nowhere, they have the DeepSeek, they produce the DeepSeek. And according to Caixin's reporting, there are at least six more such funds actively developing their own AI.

So tell us what, who do you see are the AI players and also why DeepSeek didn't come from any of those usual suspects, rather come from the quant.

Jen Zhu Scott: Great question. I think China's AI ecosystem is actually very vibrant. And apart from the very obvious large tech companies, such as Alibaba and Tencent, Baidu, et cetera, each one is having their own focus, you also have startups like DeepSeek and Manus. Manus also kind of came out from nowhere.

In terms of the large tech companies, I actually was really impressed by Tencent. I think Tencent is the company to watch because if you think about one of the probably most impactful applications in generative AI is the ability to generate images. and videos that be deployed in movies, TV, et cetera. But the biggest industry that will be able to consume this is actually gaming industry. So there's no bigger company has deeper access into the ecosystem than Tencent and their model Hunyuan, the capability and the amount of data they'll be able to train on and also they'll be able apply this within both their own, their selves, but also their own ecosystems, you know, portfolio companies, etc. It's very extensive. So I think Hunyuan is a model to watch.

What DeepSeek and Manus kind of showed us, with all these quant funds, et cetera, they were developing their own AI. The shocking part, even to me, this is a part I actually generally find very surprising, when DeepSeek came out and look into their team, I assume they all graduated from Stanford, you know MIT, et cetra. Turned out, not only the vast majority of them educated domestically. A vast majority of them did not graduate from Tsinghua and Beida tech university, the two top institutions in China. They still graduated from good universities, but they will be regarded as kind of lower end of the tier one universities than many of them probably globally, people can't tell the difference between Zhejiang University to Harbin, you know, the technology and science and technology, university, et cetera.

So that shows the depth of the talent pool coming out from China now, homemade, from universities that's much more accessible for average Chinese students compared to Tsinghua and to Beida. This means we probably will see more companies coming out of non-major big tech names like Tencent, Alibaba, or Baidu. More companies like Manus and DeepSeek, and especially with DeepSeek now has demonstrated to the world that you could have a very small team if you approach AI in a very innovative way, you could change the world without having a big brand, without having a star team that's already very famous, very well-known.

And I think that's the true power of the China ecosystem.

Robin Pomeroy: You've raised two really interesting issues there. One about education, which I'll come back to, and then one about this kind of startup mentality. You started at the beginning of this podcast, Jen, saying the thing a lot of people outside China get wrong is they see Chinese business as this monolith. And in fact, what you're saying there is there are basically start-ups happening. We often think of Silicon Valley in California as this place is where these young graduates go out and create unicorns. But you're saying then it's happening in China already and you imagine it's going to happen on an increasing scale.

Jen Zhu Scott: Yes, especially now we are watching the best universities in many ways still, the perception of the best university is still largely in the US, especially in terms of tech and STEM, et cetera. However, given the geopolitical situation and what's happening in the U.S., I think people pause more about going to the US to study. Some students from China still want to go, but more and more students, they are, number one, considering the risk of studying in the US. Number two, they also have watched homegrown graduates, how successful they have been with companies like DeepSeek. So that kind of changed the dynamic a little bit.

And DeepSeek, of course the model itself was quite shocking to the world, but the real turning point is the perception of domestic education and domestic graduates. And I think that will go a long way because tens of millions of graduates coming from China's own education system each year. And if they have a model like R1 and Manus, Manus's talent, a lot of them also domestic as well. And when they see role models like companies like this, you know, more companies will follow, right? So I think there's a lot more coming.

Robin Pomeroy: Jin Li Xin, you had a question on the future of jobs and AI.

Li Xin: Actually, I want to switch a little bit from the ability to produce high tech products like this to the ability to use that. Because after the DeepSeek moment is not just a boost to not just AI, but the Chinese business confidence in general, but there is an incredible enthusiasm to adopt DeepSeek because it's so cheap. So all of a sudden in China you can see from the central government agencies to the local government, even mom and pop shops and everyone is using something like DeepSeek and most of the time it is the DeepSeek. So this wide adoption of AI service like this, the affordability definitely is one key. How would that shape the AI scene in China and also, will that have any implications to other developing countries who cannot afford producing very expensive AI models?

Jen Zhu Scott: I argue DeepSeek changed the world. They were a little bit like Robin Hood of AI, right? Before DeepSeek, what we saw was a few handful of large tech, mostly in the US, but a couple in China as well. Basically, big tech kept this walled garden, and they make sure they don't disclose their training method, and they made sure their algorithm is protected and it's closed doors. And because all of them understood, if you could become the tool people will have to use, then you are basically sitting on this monopoly or duopoly or gollygopoly to collect rent from billions of people nonstop, right?

What DeepSeek has done, not only does they achieve such efficiency, they make open source, open weight. They disclose their entire training method. And what happens is that the entire world, basically the secret is now with humanity. Anybody in the world use very limited compute. You don't have to have a very advanced hardware and software capability. You will be able to create your own local model.

So absolutely this has made you know, democratisation of AI happen, not only just in China. You could have a doctor in Nairobi or a teacher in Bhutan would be able to access advanced AI, such as DeepSeek R1.

Having said that, I think if you are in one of the, you know 12% of the global population, what we call the West, and day in day out, you consume the media that kind of demonised China, then you will understandably question and worry about using DeepSeek, right? So this is the curve ball that the company that actually completely changed the trajectory of the entire humanity pursuit of AI is a Chinese company. But if you belong to the 88% of the global South, that 88% of the population probably care less about what the Western media's narrative, than this is the best news, right?

So I argue, DeepSeek, they actually even saved the U.S. from AI feudalism. For people who are, including in the US, a lot of my colleagues in the U.S. who really understand how open source, open weight works, they understand that how DeepSeek actually completely changed the world, right? And they understand that you could completely deploy your local data. You don't have to send anything to DeepSeek at all to be able to leverage their technology. And this is such a gift to the humanity. I wrote this op-ed in FT arguing that what DeepSeek essentially did was giving printing to the humanity, so Bible is no longer exclusive to the church, right? So that's essentially what they did. But I also understand why the 12% will feel very threatened by DeepSeek as well.

Robin Pomeroy: I want to jump in there. I saw your TED talk, Jen, about people must guard their data, and that's something you've just brought up. There are lots of concerns, many people have concerns about AI and what it could do to their jobs, what it can do to society. And certainly what it can do with their data, AI, does it already know everything about me? And you say in this TED talk, people need to guard their data. It's an economic asset. But my question to you is, didn't we lose that battle years ago? I just assume, you know, everyone's got my data, really. And hasn't generative AI made that even worse?

Jen Zhu Scott: We would have lost the battle if we accepted that's the reality, but I argue we have not.

I'm on the board of Sui, and Sui is the, basically the layer, you know, probably the, currently the fastest and most scalable layer one blockchain in the world, built by the former Libra team, Libra DM team of Facebook. The project didn't work, but Facebook did have this incredible hiring power and gathered a group of super smart people and now this group of people came out and they're not only just building layer one blockchain, they're building the entire internet stack with decentralised storage, decentralised identity, decentralised liquidity layer, all of that, whatever that's needed to create a new internet.

So if you have already. Giving away your data to tech company, I would say that's already gone. I'm a parent, and Xin, congrats, you also become parents. Raising kids in this digital age is super challenging. You don't want them to bury their heads in the sand and pretend a smartphone and AI do not exist. But you also don't them to just use and access and post everything without consideration.

So. My kids are much older and I've been thinking about this for a long time. What will make a good digital society when they grow up? And when AI is running everything, having your data that's fully controlled by yourself, you decide what data to release, what data share, what to transfer, or what data to destroy and keep is the fundamental freedom of... You know, digital citizens live in this kind of economy that's increasingly influenced and run by machines.

This kind of philosophy is very much alive and, you know doing well, there are capabilities coming out from you know organisations like Sui, et cetera are actively creating solutions that could change a different future. Just like how DeepSeek changed the trajectory of where AI is going. And I think there will be solutions similar to Deepseek, change the trajectory, you know, where the world is going as well.

And as kind of design principle with AI right now we are seeing two school of thoughts, right? One school is very much this kind of a godlike, mystic, all power, almighty AI that only a few tech bros have control. Your job is to submit all your data or your privacy and your monthly rent to enable them to build this massive cathedral. And you can only pay a visit if you pay enough money and you have nothing to say in that process.

Or a different kind of school of thought where you design AI in a very efficient, very affordable way that does not require a massive cathedral But you can basically have this kind of AI capability that's good enough as assistant as second brain not as replacement as assistant to human being that partner with human but while having human in the loop human as principle to coexist and enable what human wants to achieve.

I think 10 years maybe 10-20 years down the road those will become different religions in terms of what AI should be regarded in our society. But personally, I much rather the latter.

And to realise that, it's very important to make sure that you control data.

And since we're talking about parenting, I always try to tell my friends, don't post any of your kids' pictures online. And we are all proud. I know. You know, every parent thinks their kid's the best looking, smartest kids in the world, but once you post their pictures out there, you know you basically surrender their digital freedom, their option, you know into the wild.When they grow up and become adult, if they want to, you now be. Out there, it's their choice. It's really not the parent's choice. So it's parent's job to keep that option open for them and therefore not to post anything. Same line, similar line of thinking, we're not losing the battle, even if there's no technical solutions available, we can choose not to share.

Li Xin: What jobs will be there waiting when your kids grow up and hit the job place, or when my kid grew up and hits the job places. I mean, AI, automation, they are developing at such a break neck speed.

Jen Zhu Scott: First of all, I don't think anybody can answer that question. Five years ago, if you say someone's kid is going to MIT, Stanford to study computer science, you would be like, amazing. You would get hired straight away with a very high salary.

Right now, computer science graduates, their employment rate after graduation is lower than liberal arts. Because the entry level programmers and software engineers is not required. That's been replaced by AI.

And I would be lying if say I knew what's going to be like in five years time in ten years time right. Having said that, I think what we probably will see, this is my kind of educated guess, is that a lot of repetitive white collar jobs, junior lawyers, junior software engineers, writers, a lot of those kind of jobs will be very easily replaced by AI even with today's capability. Consulting firms, we are seeing a lot of McKinsey, Bing, et cetera, they're all cutting junior consultant, right? Consulting firm's probably not going to exist like the way before.

Then you, you probably will have the type of ability that's required to really know how to interact with AI and, you know, make, you know whatever output is required by the company, but enhanced by AI. So require you to understand how to drive AI really, really well, those jobs probably will emerge.

I was at a Chanel meeting with their senior executives and tried to, you know, explain to a group of senior executives in fashion industry where AI is heading. And I used this analogy, I think probably everybody can relate, right? The more this kind of cheap, affordable, accessible AI content that becomes available to the world, and if the world is flooded by that kind of AI generates the content it will be a little bit a bit like plastic flowers right plastic flowers become so cheap and so available all year round they all look the same and the when the flash plastic flour becomes so available and so cheap. It didn't make real flours. Obsolete. You actually make people appreciate real flowers more. So I think this kind of stagnation with the traditional craftsman things that are made by human become more valuable, right? Or interaction with human become valuable.

So how would any company be able to, you know, maximise that and really enhance that is also a great way to navigate this kind of AI-driven future.

So I refuse to think that AI is going to replace everything. I hope it will not. Human evolution has always been in this kind of productivity trap, right? Whenever we invented the tool, we thought, fantastic. You know, human will never need to do this anymore. We can just stay home and we don't have to work anymore. And the reality is that every time there's you know elevation of productivity we just elevate our expectation in terms of output as well. You have to you have to produce more using the same salary because now you have AI.

So, hard to say where it's going to go, but I think as parents probably the best advice you could give to your children is To find something find a problem that they really care about or passionate about and have this kind of work ethics to really try 100% and try to solve that problem. And then if AI become a tool, that's the right tool to solve the problem. They will be able to use that tool.

Li Xin: Thanks, Jen, for the very useful tips. I can use that, and that gives us confidence that the humanly produced podcast and professionally produced news website is still useful.

Robin Pomeroy: I was just waiting for Jen to mention the podcast, you know, because I've been listening to the NotebookLM generated ones, which at the moment are quite unconvincing, but you know it's not going to take long, is it? But I like the analogy with the real flowers, you know. Li Xin, you and I, we're the real flowers of podcast hosts. Over to you again.

Li Xin: All right. Well, since we are curtain raising for the Summer Davos, I think one big topic that will be discussed is manufacturing. And we do see that smart technologies, including AI agents, give a lot of new opportunities to increase productivity. And China is definitely the world's manufacturer. How will that impact China as the world's manufacture base, do you think, the adoption and development of AI?

Jen Zhu Scott: There are AI without physical form. That's the most popular, right, ChatGPT-type of products that basically reduce the human-machine interaction into natural language. And that's very, very powerful.

But also, there are AI with physical form, which is robotics. And China's robotic installation is larger and higher than number two and number 10 in the world added up together. And the growth pace is still very fast. And what is really powerful we have seen in China in the past probably 10 years, I guess made in China 2025, deadline this year. We took a look at all the targets that had been set 10 years ago. Most of them has been achieved, right?

But I actually think the manufacturing besides the most powerful part that happened in China ecosystem is the entire industrialised ecosystem that exists in China right now. That if you want to produce something, you don't have to really go outside of China and everything will be able to be made in China, right?

I've been trying to explain to this a lot of my Western counterparts, why this matters. And I finally found online, someone was talking about this and I thought was perfect way to explain how powerful it is, this ecosystem. So. You know, Peking duck, everybody's favourite dish. So Peking duck, by the time the duck itself sold in the restaurant is about two US dollars. So you ask, how could a duck sold for two US dollars, right? Because that's probably not enough to buy fertilisers. But how could the duck only cost two dollars? The answer is, because of the domestic demand, big enough market and also mature kind of supply chain on all kinds of things, so a duck, before hitting the restaurant, the duck feather and down has been sent to some clothing factory, and duck liver been exported to France, and duck neck is very, you know, celebrates the delicacy in Hubei province, for example, duck heads, you know, to Sichuan, et cetera. So, so before the duck hits the restaurants, all these different parts that have already been realised, the value of the ducks. And that's why by the time you sell to the restaurant, $2 is more than enough for them to make profit, right? So this is just basically kind of analogy of the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem, now with AI and robotics, you basically have a very powerful domestic industrial chain that will be able to produce practically everything. And in the kind of price, that's very difficult, if not impossible, to be matched by anywhere else.

And AI software obviously has already been adopted by all the manufacturing. And AI hardware, and this will be, you know, developing hand in hand, and with this kind of a cheap, good enough type of AI that become very, very pervasive in Chinese companies, I think we are just seeing the beginning of true automation. And this automation is also very necessary because of China's demographic challenges as well.

Robin Pomeroy: That raises so many questions about global trade that we just don't have time to get into now. We're drawing towards the end of the time we've got available. I want to ask you, we've talked a lot about competition and geopolitical rivalry. This Asian Davos, like the Davos in Davos is about bringing people together to cooperate. Jen, do you see, in addition to the competition and the rivalry, are there areas, I'm thinking particularly when it comes to AI and technology, where you think the world, rivals in the world can come together and cooperate?

Jen Zhu Scott: Thank you, Robin, for asking that question in the way you asked, because most places I go, media will ask me, how do you compare US and China? Well, I think US versus China kind of mentality does not work, right? Because I think the true ecosystem will, one side will always be better in certain aspect than the other, and it's not black and white. And so to say which one is better is like, Is apple better than orange? I don't know, right?

And even right now with the difficult geopolitical climate, I've been seeing this everywhere, every single time I've asked this question. And I sound like a broken record. Apologies if I do. I think instead of US versus China, we should talk more about US plus China.

Take curing cancer as example. The best biotech-related AI is probably in the US ecosystem. If you take a look at what DeepMind has achieved with AlphaFold, et cetera, it's super exciting. And, you know, Demis [Hassabis] of DeepMind is one of those AI leaders in the West, and I truly admire. I think, you now, they are really trying to make a difference for the humanity.

However, 10 million cancer deaths a year in the world, four to five of them are in China. So how could you cure cancer without collaborating with China, right? And those are just one of the examples of all this pressing questions and challenges we face that has no nationality. And cancer does not choose you just because you're Chinese or American. And I think. If we could find ways to put the differences aside and do something for the betterment, for the humanity, it sounds idealistic, but at least, for those of us who have a platform or a voice, at least we should push and see how far we can go.

Because end of the days, I have no interest. You know, we're not high school kids in the, you know, school yards trying to compete. Who is better, you know, I'm better than you, you are better than me. I think we're here to try to solve problems.

So, if we could combine US capability with China's data, size of the markets, and product market fit, scalability, and make everything very affordable, et cetera, we could really make the world much, much better. So I hope Summer Davos will be able to cover some of the discussions and I still remain very hopeful.

Robin Pomeroy: Perfect place to leave it. I have so many more questions but we just don't have time. Where can people find out more about you? I mentioned your TED talk, you've mentioned an FT column, where would you direct people to find out more about your thinking on these things?

Jen Zhu Scott: I'm quite active on Twitter and from time to time, I write on LinkedIn as well. But yeah, FT, I write from time-to-time and Caixin, once upon a time, I was a columnist for Caixin, but probably the worst student.

Li Xin: I'll chase you for more columns from you.

Robin Pomeroy: We've already made a deal. Li Xin, anything you'd like to add before we close out the podcast?

Li Xin: Basically, Caixin wants to produce information about China from the inside. And I think what Jen has shared with us is really information from the insider. So I hope people can also visit us at Caixinglobal.com and we'll make sure that we have more content from Jen and more content on tech in China from our website.

Robin Pomeroy: Well, we'll try to do the same on Radio Davos as well. And you can find us at wef.ch/podcasts. Thanks so much for this. I hope we can speak again at some point, in the not too distant future.

Jen Zhu Scott: Thank you so much.

Li Xin: Thank you so much.

Robin Pomeroy: Thanks to our guest, Jen Zhu Scott, Founding Partner of IN. Capital. And thanks to my co-host Li Xin, Managing Editor of Caixin Global. You also heard Mirek Dusek, managing director of the World Economic Forum, talking about the Summer Davos, the AMNC.

You can follow all that action on our website and across social media, using the hashtag #AMNC25.

And please follow Radio Davos wherever you get your podcasts or at wef.ch/podcasts.

This episode of Radio Davos was written, presented and edited by me, Robin Pomeroy. Studio production was by Taz Kelleher.

We will be back next week with a video-podcast featuring the top tech of 2025, don't miss that. But for now thanks to you for listening and goodbye.