More than 300 business leaders from China
and abroad attended the one-day conference, which was preceded by the first ICC
Executive Board meeting held in Beijing, on 27 September.
Executives attending the conference
participated in a session on finance and economic growth, as well as a session
on international trade and investment that featured the unveiling of ICC’s
draft Business World Trade Agenda recommendations.
“The conference in Beijing provided a
tremendous opportunity to begin building consensus in the global business
community on what developments are necessary for strengthening the multilateral
trading system and for improving the quality of the financial services sector,”
said ICC Secretary General Jean-Guy Carrier.
ICC presented its draft World Trade Agenda
(WTA) recommendations to journalists ahead of the conference. The WTA
initiative is intended to mobilize world business behind a forward-looking
multilateral trade and investment policy agenda and to provide recommendations
to governments in the first half of next year to address the urgency of
declining trade, which has been further hampered by the shortage of trade
finance and the rising threat of protectionism.
The draft trade recommendations were
delivered at the 28 September media conference by ICC Vice-Chairman Victor K.
Fung, ICC Chairman Gerard Worms and the newly-appointed Secretary General of
ICC China, Lin Shunjie.
“We are gathering opinions from business,
starting in Beijing, on our draft trade recommendations. We believe that
business is uniquely placed to offer innovative ways for overcoming obstacles
in the Doha Round of trade negotiations,” Mr Carrier said.
ICC will be holding consultations to gather
input for the final recommendations to be delivered at the World Business Summit, part of the ICC
World Chambers Federation 8th World Chambers Congress, being hosted by the
Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry in April 2013.
CCPIT Vice-Chairman Zhang Wei has expressed
his determination to work closely with ICC on a number of projects over the
next year. ICC’s next event in China will be a meeting of the ICC Commission on
Intellectual Property in Beijing, including a conference on “International
Industry and Commerce Intellectual Property Seminar: Increasing economic and
business competitiveness using intellectual assets”.
Future plans also include an exchange of
personnel for visits of several weeks in order to strengthen the partnership
between ICC and ICC China.