On 14 May 2025, HE Ambassador Zheng Zeguang attended the 2025 Sino-UK Entrepreneur Forum and delivered a keynote address titled “Upholding Openness and Cooperation, and Promoting Exchange and Mutual Learning”. Hosted by the 48 Group and China Daily, the forum gathered nearly 200 participants from the British government, financial, trade, science and education sectors. The full text of the Ambassador’s address is as follows:

Chairman Jack Perry,
Mr Sun Shangwu,
Lord Taylor,
Baroness Uddin,
Alderman Timothy Hailes,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is my great pleasure to attend the 2025 Sino-UK Entrepreneur Forum. Thank you to the 48 Group and China Daily for the kind invitation.

At a time when AI is leading a new wave of sci-tech and industrial revolution and profoundly changing the human society, this forum is highly relevant with the theme of “Smart Decisions for Smart Technologies”.

The Chinese government places great importance on AI development.

In recent years, we have been making efforts to improve top-level design and strengthen overall planning, achieving systematic and comprehensive advancement of China’s AI capabilities.

At the same time, we also remind ourselves of the need to face up to the gap and redouble our efforts to advance AI technological innovation, industrial development and application in all sectors, so that we can firmly maintain the initiative in AI development and governance.

China’s AI development can be characterized by the following key features:

First, expanding scale. China is home to over 4,500 AI-related enterprises, with the core AI industry valued at nearly 600 billion yuan and the AI chip market exceeding 150 billion yuan.

Second, flourishing innovation. In 2024, AI patent applications from China accounted for 61.5% of the global total.

Chinese tech companies have launched models such as Baidu’s “Wenxin Yiyan”, ByteDance’s “Doubao”, Tencent’s “Yuanbao”, Alibaba’s “Tongyi”, and Huawei’s “Pangu”.

The open-source large language model DeepSeek, developed by a young Chinese team, gained global popularity upon release.

The world’s first fully autonomous AI agent, Manus, has the capacity to function without human micromanagement.

Third, improving computing power. China’s supercomputers account for 45% of the global total. With over 4 million 5G base stations, China has built the world’s largest mobile communication and fibre broadband networks.

In 2024, data production in China exceeded 41 zettabytes (ZB), a 25% year-on-year increase, achieving both quantitative and qualitative growth.

Fourth, increasing application empowerment. The vigorous development of AI is a reflection of China’s high-quality growth.

Technologies represented by AI are fostering new industries and business models, and transforming those traditional industries. They have also helped bring the Chinese economy to the higher-end, and made it smarter and greener.

—Statistics show that, in 2024, the added value of China’s new industries, new business formats and new business models accounted for over 18% of the GDP. The number of Chinese enterprises utilising AI technologies grew by over 37%, covering R&D, production and sales.

High-tech sectors such as integrated circuits and industrial robots achieved significant growth.

—In the first quarter of this year, the added value of high-tech manufacturing grew by 9.7% year-on-year, and digital product manufacturing grew by 10.2%.

In the first four months, China’s high-tech product exports reached 1.52 trillion yuan, up 7.4%.

—China is now the world’s largest renewable energy market and equipment manufacturer, the largest exporter of clean technology, and leads the world in renewable energy installed capacity.

The combined installed capacity of wind and solar power has now surpassed thermal power for the first time.

—From January to April, China’s vehicle production and sales both exceeded 10 million units for the first time, of which those of NEVs reached 4.4 million and 4.3 million units respectively, up 48% and 46% year-on-year.

BYD has launched its “Super e-Platform”, enabling a 400-km range with just 5 minutes of charging. CATL has released its second-generation Shenxing superfast-charging battery, achieving over 520-km range with 5 minutes of charging.

Going forward, China will focus on basic research in AI, and pursue breakthroughs in core technologies.

We will integrate AI sci-tech innovation with industrial innovation, and build an enterprise-led innovation ecosystem that fosters synergy among businesses, universities, research institutes and end users.

We will make integrated use of policies concerning intellectual property rights, and fiscal and taxation incentives.

Efforts will be made to promote AI education across all academic stages to cultivate a steady stream of talent. 

We will formulate and improve laws, regulations, policies and systems, to guarantee AI’s safety, reliability and controllability.

Ladies and gentlemen,

While AI technologies bring unseen opportunities for humanity, they also present unprecedented risks and challenges.

In response, China has proposed the Global AI Governance Initiative in 2023.

The initiative outlines 11 proposals concerning the development, security and governance of AI.

On development, we emphasize a people-oriented approach, and believe that all players must respect the sovereignty of other countries. We must create AI for good and uphold mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.

On security, we emphasize the need to establish a risk-testing and assessment system, to formulate and improve relevant laws, regulations and rules, and to ensure fairness and non-discrimination.

On governance, we emphasize the importance of having an ethical review and governance system and actively developing technologies to help us do so. We need to increase the representation and voice of developing countries and support discussions within the United Nations about establishing an international governance institution.

President Xi Jinping pointed out that AI can be an international public good that benefits humanity. We will carry out extensive international cooperation on AI, help Global South countries strengthen technological capabilities, and make China’s contribution to bridging the global intelligence gap.

To promote international cooperation, in 2024, China facilitated the adoption of a UN General Assembly resolution on “Enhancing International Cooperation on Capacity-building of Artificial Intelligence”, and initiated the establishment of a Group of Friends for this purpose.

Just two days ago, we held the second Workshop on AI Capacity Building in Beijing, with participants from nearly 40 countries and international organizations.

In July this year, we are going to hold the 2025 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai.

Ladies and gentlemen,

China and the UK have had some exchanges on AI.

In 2023, China sent a delegation to the UK’s AI Safety Summit. More recently, the UK participated in a meeting of the Group of Friends for International Cooperation on AI Capacity-building hosted by China.

We would welcome the UK sending a senior delegation to the upcoming AI conference in Shanghai.

For further exchanges and collaboration, it is important to correct some misconceptions about China and get rid of political interference. Some in the UK continue to view China through an outdated lens. They hold on to their ideological biases, overstretch the concept of national security, and try to disrupt China-UK sci-tech exchanges.

It must be pointed out that both countries have a solid sci-tech foundation and enjoy unique strengths. We can very well learn from each other.

China is home to around 400,000 high-tech enterprises and ranks second globally in the number of unicorn companies.

China has established the world’s most comprehensive academic disciplines and the largest talent pool.

China leads the world in the number of top 100 global innovation clusters, full-time equivalent R&D personnel, high-impact research papers, and PCT international patent applications.

Actually, both countries have benefited from exchanges and collaboration.

For example, 11.4% of the research papers published by British scholars are co-authored with their Chinese counterparts.

Over the past five years, 24.8% of China-UK co-authored papers have had a citation impact twice the global average.

More recently, moon dust samples retrieved by China’s Chang’e-5 mission have been shared with seven institutions in six countries. Professor Mahesh Anand of the UK Open University has also been loaned this extremely rare material.

We hope people here will be more confident and open-minded, and there will be more of such mutually-beneficial, two-way cooperation.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As we speak, changes unseen in a century keep accelerating and the new round of sci-tech revolution is booming. The development and governance of AI urgently requires international cooperation.

At the same time, unilateralism, trade bullying, and tariff war run rampant. International sic-tech cooperation faces unprecedented disruptions.

We must uphold true multilateralism and champion international sic-tech exchanges. We must firmly oppose decoupling, the severing of the global industrial and supply chains and “small yard with high fence”, and say no to any exclusive blocs or arrangements, bilateral or multilateral.

This is what is needed for sci-tech innovation and governance and for the advancement of human civilization.

We need to actively implement the important common understandings reached between our leaders, follow through on the constructive outcomes of the strategic dialogue, the economic and financial dialogue, the energy dialogue, the health dialogue and the high-level military dialogue. 

Moving forward, there are more dialogues that need to be restarted.

I believe these dialogues will create a more favourable political and policy environment for exchanges and cooperation in AI and other areas.

I hope businesses from both countries will seize the opportunity presented by this forum to deepen mutual understanding, promote practical cooperation, and bring more tangible benefits to people in both countries.

I wish this forum great success.

Thank you.