Overview
- The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions opened in Dalian on June 23 with roughly 1,700 leaders from more than 90 countries attending the three-day forum.
- Under the theme 'Innovating at Scale' sessions concentrate on how artificial intelligence, quantum computing and related breakthroughs can move from labs into factories and services.
- Dalian officials are using the forum to showcase recent gains including 2025 GDP above 1 trillion yuan and a reported 217 new foreign-invested enterprises with $2.7 billion in paid-in investment last year.
- The city points to long-term growth in R&D spending and labs—R&D rose from about 4.28 billion yuan in 2007 to 28.09 billion yuan in 2023—as evidence its innovation ecosystem can support industrial upgrading.
- Speakers warn that translating breakthroughs into broad gains will require new skills, policy frameworks and investor readiness, and they say progress here could attract more green-tech and advanced-manufacturing investment to the region.