The Beijing office’s mission is to promote public-private cooperation and innovation to shape a shared future for China and the world.

Despite the challenging global and domestic environment during the 2022-2023 period, the office supported Chinese Partners and constituents seeking to share perspectives at global events, hosted 36 platform activities and initiatives, and published 12 reports.

Engagement rose over the course of the year; the Forum invited 76 Chinese public figures to share their perspective at events, and the number of Chinese companies that joined the Forum increased significantly, a growth of more than 30% year-on-year.

In July 2022, Premier Li Keqiang (2013-2023) spoke to more than 300 CEOs and chairpersons of Forum Partner companies from over 50 countries at the World Economic Forum Special Virtual Dialogue with Global Business Leaders. Premier Li spoke about China–US relations, climate goals, manufacturing development and consumption policy.

The New Champion Dialogues were hosted virtually in July 2022, attracting more than 1,400 public- and private-sector participants for a series of high-level global conversations.

Walking Davos, which began in 2020, continued its “pulse-taking” events in different parts of the country. Over 120 high-level China- based executives from multinational companies met with senior officials to gain insights during events in Beijing and Hainan.

The office implemented multiple Forum initiatives in the Greater China region, including related to advanced manufacturing, as 50 of the 132 plants in the Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network are based in China. Virtual and in-person factory visits were held in 14 of them to exchange best-practice ideas.

With regard to nature and climate initiatives, the government pledged to work with the Forum to conserve and plant 70 billion trees by 2030. The Forum’s Accelerating Clean Hydrogen Initiative convened Chinese stakeholders to exchange insights, and contributed Chinese best practices to the global Coal to Renewables Toolkit. The Transitioning Industrial Clusters Towards Net Zero initiative welcomed two Chinese clusters.

In the financial sector, the Financing the Transition to a Net Zero Future project explored the potential of transition finance in China. Chinese Real Estate Investment Trusts Development was initiated to support supply-side structural reform in the financial sector, and the Future of Asset Management initiative highlighted the outlook for China’s pensions industry.

World Economic Forum Japan aims to continue strengthening the engagement of key Japanese stakeholders and, in the face of complex geo-economic and geopolitical dynamics, create more meaningful insights, interaction and impact.

During the period, the Japan office developed several regional initiatives, the most high profile of which included the Japan Energy Transition Initiative. The office convened the public- and private-sector stakeholders to discuss Japan’s path for sustainable and effective energy transition.

As part of this work, the office used the Forum’s System Value framework to assess the impact of political, social, economic and technological choices on Japan’s net-zero target; identified end-to-end hydrogen supply chain case studies and analysed investment barriers in each part of the value chain; and determined the industry’s progress on the net-zero transition process, offering a comparative analysis with the global average and best practices.

The Japan office continued to develop the Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator programme in the country. With Cabinet Office participation and co-chairs from Japanese business, the accelerator pursued efforts to boost women’s economic empowerment. The discussions also supported efforts to tackle the declining birth rate and ageing workforce.

Japan hosted the G7 in May 2023, during which the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Japan was invited to organize side events at ministerial meetings on smart cities, agile governance and digital transformation.

The World Economic Forum LLC has engaged US stakeholders in shaping global, regional and industry agendas since 2006. The New York office manages relationships with Forum Partners and city and national government that support the Forum’s mission to drive relevant and sustainable change through multistakeholder dialogue and public-private cooperation.

Reflecting a return to business as usual after the pandemic, the New York office was involved in several Forum and international initiatives and meetings, including the Sustainable Development Impact Meetings, held in September 2022. In November 2022, the Forum’s Centre for Financial and Monetary Systems hosted the Forum on the Silver Economy 2022 in partnership with the Global Coalition on Aging. The event addressed issues ranging from financial well-being to workplace innovations, health system transformations, investing in the longevity economy and boosting financial resilience.

In March, the New York office held meetings alongside the UN 2023 Water Conference, convening CEOs, senior business executives, policy-makers and innovators. Seven sessions brought nearly 150 participants together to promote systemic strategies for multistakeholder action.

The teams based in New York and San Francisco continued their work on global and local initiatives spanning a range of topics.

They particularly focused on the areas of consumer, financial services and health in New York and urban transformation and Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies in San Francisco. For example, the New York team, as part of the Consumers Beyond Waste initiative, developed a framework for standardized reuse measurement, enabling companies to measure progress on reuse in a harmonized way, and the New Frontiers of Nutrition initiative established a diverse community of more than 100 stakeholders to identify strategies to increase the widespread availability, access and adoption of nutritious food.