Key signals from US-Russia talks in Riyadh
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Hello and welcome to World Today, I'm Ding Han in Beijing. Coming up: China's foreign minister says China supports all Ukraine peace efforts and Gaza is not a bargaining chip. The United States and Russia have agreed to improve ties and work towards ending Ukraine conflict.

Clean energy contributed 10% to China's GDP last year according to new analysis. And the Parliament of Vietnam has approved a new $8 billion railway link to China. To listen to this episode again or to catch up on our previous episodes, you can download our podcast by searching World Today.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called for stronger global governance and renewed efforts to bring about peace in Ukraine and the Middle East. The senior Chinese diplomat made a remark on Tuesday when chairing a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. Wang Yi said China supports all efforts conducive to peace talks for the war in Ukraine, adding Gaza and the West Bank are not a bargaining chip in political trade-offs.

Wang Yi has also warned against marginalizing other hospital issues like the Gaza crisis at a time when most attention is currently being paid to Ukraine. China is currently in a month-long presidency of the UN Security Council. So joining us now on the line is Dr. Wang Jing, associate professor with Northwest University in Xi'an, China.

So thank you very much for joining us today, Professor Wang Jing. On the Ukraine crisis, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing would continue to follow four points. Number one, respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our countries. Number two, adhering to the principles of the UN Charter. Number three, paying due respect to legitimate security concern of our countries.

and finally supporting efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of the crisis. So what do you make of the significance of these four points? And why do you think China supports our efforts that are conducive to peace talks, including this very recent common understanding between the US and Russia?

I think the four points that the China versions from Wang Yun's expression are very crucial to the internal peace. Actually, we're talking about not the peace, a temporary peace, but actually we're talking about the lasting, a long lasting peace between the different countries.

That demands on the one hand, these kind of disputes with respect to the willingness and the political rights of every country. The negotiation should be established upon the justice and equal rights between different countries, particularly between the different countries with disputes against each other. Also, on the other hand, these kind of negotiations should be organized under the

for instance, that are widely recognized by the international community. So that is why Wang Yi's speech was very crucial, because we know that during the past weeks that there has been a lot of discussions over maybe the possible solutions to the Russian-Ukraine crisis and also the Middle Eastern crisis between Israel and the Hamas.

So, a lot of maybe new solutions or voices now lead to a lot of skepticism and a lot of criticism and further discussions between different countries in Europe,

Middle East and of course the rest of the world. So that is why I think Wang Yi's voices are very crucial and highly needed at this time. It's on the one hand directed a very correct direction for the settlements, for the settlements organizations. On the other hand, I think it will be very, very helpful to the confidence from international communities for the future peace construction and the peace enhancing efforts.

Hmm. Okay. So we have actually heard from Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying at this very UN meeting that, quote, countries are interdependent, they share the same future, and no country can go it alone, unquote.

Now, some people say on the Ukraine crisis, for example, China has a consensus-based approach, which is in stark contrast with the approach on the part of certain countries. What is your take on this?

That's true because China's approach is very based on the idea of so-called consensus space. Because actually in the last several days, let's be frank, there has been some kind of the solutions of suggestions that organized also for work by some certain country with the perspective of so-called, we call it hegemony.

or maybe some kind of unilateral idea. And these ideas do not consider the interests of the very closely related parties and also ignore the very important international communities' shared ideas and shared principles over how to settle the

I mean, we're not just talking about the nuclear crisis, but actually we're also talking about the Middle Eastern politics and other politics in other regions and the rest of the world. So that is why I think Longyi's voices are very clear. That is, on the one hand, the religious countries, their legal rights

and that their concerns should be highly respected and highly taken into consideration. And then on the other hand, some find that the international consensus should be respected and should be also taken into the consideration of maybe the future peace talks that would be organized. So that is why I think these voices stand with, possibly with the highly legal expectation of the international community.

So what is your understanding when Minister Wang Yi said that Gaza and the West Bank are not a bargaining chip in political trade-offs? Who exactly is using Gaza or the West Bank as a bargaining chip, frankly speaking?

I think that the bond is very deeply understanding the situation, transformation in the country. Some people try to take the Palestinians and their legal rights and the so-called budgeting chips or the so-called trade-offs for some maybe of their political outlines in this region. So that is unacceptable. That is something that should not be tolerated by the international community.

So that is why I think Wang Yi's voices are very important and very crucial. And maybe some countries, for example, United States, they have their ideas. Maybe they hope to bring peace back to the region. But again, without the legal rights insisted by the international community, without the legally

respected rights from the international community toward the Palestinian region and toward the Palestinian people in the Gada Street. I don't think the long-lasting peace would be very likely in the future, although maybe some pressure will be given from some certain countries. No lasting peace and no long-lasting confidence for the future peace between the different parties, particularly between Israelis and Palestinians.

So representatives from more than 100 countries have attended this China hostage UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday.

And at this meeting, there was actually a full point proposition. Number one, the UN remains at the very core of global governance. Number two, the trend towards multilateralism is irreversible. Number three, solidarity and cooperation are fundamental. And finally, the reform of the global governance policy.

seems to be more urgent than ever. So what do you think these four points tell us about China's view with regard to global order today?

I think these four points represent the very basic principles of the United Nations and also represent very good principles that have been highly respected by the international community over the solutions that could end up all these disputes and the crisis. So that is why

I think these four points tells China's view on the global order, that is, global order should be on the one hand established upon the legal rights of different countries, and also on the other hand should be constructed upon the international laws and regulations that represents the consensus and willingness, share the willingness of the international community. So that is why I think one is, as well as China's

um uh idea and shining voices are very crucial and very critical particularly in this time particularly the time that the fall of uncertainty we can follow some kind of instabilities

Now, some people might say China's endorsement of multilateralism, that's primarily because endorsing multilateralism first and foremost serves China's own interests. Would you agree with this point? Why or why not?

I think that should be separated into two parts. On the one hand, of course, every country's foreign policy is of their own interest, that's for sure, because no countries can uphold the kind of foreign policy that would be against its own interests. And if they think of the state, we're left alone. So China's

of course foreign policy and the foreign principles serve our own interests that's for sure but on the other hand i think we our voices and china's foreign policies also serve the international community uh interest particularly we china's very strongly upheld voices and the senses

about the multilateralism, about the legal rights of the religious parties of the different crises, about the people status of all the members in the international community. I think these should also be highly welcome by the international community, also serve our own country's interests. So that is why I think China's

Foreign policy is very smart and very well designed on the one hand, serves our own interests and also on the other hand, in accordance with international communities, widely concerned issues that will be in the future, I think, continue to serve the major interests of the international community.

Thank you very much for your perspective and for joining us. Dr. Wang Jing, Associate Professor with Northwest University in Xi'an, China. Coming up, the United States and Russia have agreed to improve their bilateral ties and work towards ending the Ukraine conflict. Stay tuned.

China has conducted another major asset reshuffle to overhaul its financial sector. The Ministry of Finance has transferred all of its controlling stakes in the group of financial companies to Central Huijin, a sovereign fund under the State Council. What prompted the reshuffle? Is it just an asset transfer between different pockets of the central government? And to what extent will it help to overhaul the country's financial sector?

Find out on this week's Chat Lounge on your favorite podcast platform and CGTN Radio. You are listening to World Today. I'm Dinghan in Beijing. The U.S. and Russia have agreed to work on a path to ending the war in Ukraine and improving bilateral ties. Senior American and Russian officials have held their first face-to-face meeting since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The Russian delegation was led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Kremlin's foreign policy advisor Yuri Yushchenkov, while the U.S. delegation included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. The four-and-a-half-hour meeting in Saudi Arabia came a week after a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

So joining us now on the line is Joseph Syracusa, professor of global futures with Curtin University. Thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you. So the Trump administration has described the talks in the Saudi capital of Riyadh as, quote unquote, positive, upbeat and constructive. While for the Russian side, Kremlin said it was a very serious discussion of all the issues that the two sides wanted to touch upon. So what do you make of the key signals or the key messages from this meeting?

Well, it was a very important meeting for a number of reasons at a number of levels. Number one, it reset...

or U.S.-Russian relations in a way that hasn't been done in the last three years. The Biden administration did everything it could to ignore the Kremlin and whatever they were thinking about. And so, you know, this is a very important relationship. These are the two major nuclear power holders in the world. These two nations, the United States and Russia,

The former Soviet Union used to run the show, say bipolar world was the nature of the Cold War. And having this kind of security relationship is crucial. I mean, I was very, I was despairing during the last couple of years. I mean, we have two major nuclear powers and there's no discussion. Anyway, the president of the United States decided it was time to bring Putin in from the cold and Putin decided it was time to come in from the cold.

And so he's agreed to negotiate. Now, negotiations is about leverage. It's not about compromise, who's stronger, who's weaker, if you have any leverage. And the Americans, that is Rubio and President Trump and others, they want this war to disappear. You know, it's very, very distracting. Tens of thousands of people have died. They think the war should never have really started because it was about something else. And, of course, the Russians are,

They're dying a slow death with sanctions and the like, and this is their chance to come in from the cold. And I think these negotiations will give them just about everything they want. But keep in mind, this crisis in Ukraine began

as an attempt by NATO to move into Ukraine and to put advanced weapons systems in Ukraine's borders. Those weapons systems are about 11 minutes to the Kremlin at the kind of speed that they go. And at the time, I said everywhere, both in China and Russia and other places, that we

What was happening with the militarization of Ukraine by NATO or the attempt by NATO, we were coming very close to another Cuban Missile Crisis. That is, the very delicate nuclear balance of terror was shifting. This is exactly the reason John Kennedy nearly went to war with Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 when Khrushchev tried to move those weapons from Moscow into Ukraine.

into Cuba. And I might point out to your audience that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and there were 13 days of crisis, that Cuba was not involved in negotiations. Even though it wasn't Cuba, about Cuba, potential invasion of Cuba, Fidel Castro had nothing to say about it. Okay, I take your point. So,

After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the U.S. government under Joe Biden took a stance alongside its European allies to throw full support behind the Ukrainian side and trying to isolate Russia on the international stage. That was pretty clear. So do you think a strategy of attempting to isolate Russia on the international stage has worked well for Washington?

No, it's a disaster. It's counterproductive, self-defeating. The idea of trying to exclude a major actor in Europe and in Asia from these negotiations is ridiculous. Joe Biden, of course, is an unreconstructed coal warrior. He's a Russophobe. He thought in 1991 the United States had taken care of Russia.

taking care of Moscow and the Kremlin. And he was looking for a chance to, it was unfinished business for Biden. So what he decided to do was to ignore Putin and to bankroll the Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians had about 41 million people at the time, 7, 10 million that fled the country looking for safety and the rest of it. And of course, as you know, there was a communique building up in Moscow

And Turkey, which would have allowed Putin to have some...

military gains or to have some territorial gains. And keep in mind that in the population of Ukraine, it's about 41 million. Today, it's about 37 million. 17% of the population are Russians. These are Russians who were living there up until the breakup with the Soviet Union. So those problems in the Donetsk and in other areas are real problems. Anyway, Biden completely miscalculated. He bankrolled the Ukrainians.

to fight to the last man. It wasn't going to work. It was never going to work. All he wanted to do was to keep this problem in the weeds until the 2024 election was over. And of course, Americans have spent about $100 billion on Ukraine. And there comes a time in American life where

People just say enough is enough. You know, a hundred billion dollars wasn't enough to do it. You're running out of recruits anyway. Maybe the time has come for a negotiation. I think it's very important to stop the killing there. I think the idea of a ceasefire and

unqualified ceasefire followed by negotiations, I think it's something whose time has come. So if we are to think about this emergency meeting convened by the French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday, there is of course a widespread, really a widespread sense of crisis

across the European capitals right now nowadays because Trump's declaration or his declared intention to try to strike a deal to put an end to this war in Ukraine is really um stoking fears I would say that it could potentially leave European continent vulnerable etc do you think um

This represents a legitimate concern on the European part. And by the way, in the meantime, why do you think we are also, we have also heard a message from Marco Rubio, the top American diplomat now, that no one is really being sidelined in the peace negotiation for the war in Ukraine?

Well, at the end of the day, the Ukrainians and the Europeans will come in to a certain extent. I mean, they'll be asked to ratify something that's been decided in Moscow and Washington. So they're not going to be the major players here because, as I said, they had no particular leverage. NATO is 76 years old. It was designed in 1949 to keep the Russians out, the Soviets out of Europe, and to keep the West Germans in Europe.

And it worked pretty well. The last 20, 30 years, it's worked less well because it's, it was so successful that it was really out of business. And of course, after the end of the Cold War in 1991, NATO, which had become a business by now, you know, and had, uh, uniforms, buildings, uh,

medical programs, pensions. I mean, it was a business looking for something to do. And there are a lot of smart people, including Francois Mitterrand and George Kennan and William Burns and others who argued in past years that this creeping mission of NATO to bring in the former Soviet republics

was going to come a cropper at the end, that it wasn't going to work very well and would only antagonize the Russians. Now, I believe Vladimir Putin complained about this in 2007 at the Munich Security Conference. He said he wanted a halt to this attack

creep of NATO because it was just too threatening to the Russian mentality and to the Russian nuclear arsenal. He was right. But this idea that you could just keep bringing them in, which means you're sort of interfering with them anyway. And so I think President Biden overestimated

America's abilities, underestimated the Russian abilities. And I think he started to overestimate what the importance of NATO. NATO has less and less importance in American life. Americans are not going to trade.

Kiev for Chicago or Kiev for anything, you know, or Kiev for Poland or Warsaw, that kind of thing. I mean, the NATO thing has come to an end. And I know Putin has been trying to put a wedge in NATO for the past 20 years. Well, in this case, the Ukraine war has proved very successful.

Okay. So the final question before we let you go, Professor, when we talk about the potential improvement with regard to U.S.-China, not U.S.-China, but U.S.-Russia ties, how far do you think it can go eventually, given the fact that there is still widespread anti-Russia sentiment across a large part of the political spectrum in America, I would say?

Well, the anti-Russian feeling in America, and I might even add the anti-Chinese feeling, resides in political elites in Washington. This is not a feeling.

held outside of the greater Washington area. Washington's 70 square miles, surrounded by 5 million square miles. This feeling of some kind of antipathy towards Moscow or later Beijing exhibited by the intelligence communities is not true. This is a view held by a small number of people

who've got us into all these wars in my lifetime, beginning with the Vietnam War. They're looking for opportunities to ensconce themselves in power and the rest of it. And I think it takes a president, leadership of a president, to change course. When Franklin Roosevelt went to war against Nazi Germany, it was because he had changed the American view. When Ronald Reagan decided to reach out to the Russians with detente,

He was going against the grain of the American public, certainly the American political leadership. When Richard Nixon reached out to Zhou Enlai and Mao in 1972 in that famous trip to China with Kissinger, he changed the course of history. You know, the president has the ability to do this. So, you know. Thank you very much, Professor Syracuse. Thank you very much for putting this very important issue into a sort of historical perspective.

We are talking with Professor Joseph Siracusa, Professor of Global Futures with Curtin University. You are listening to World Today. I'm Dinghan in Beijing. We'll be back after a short break. You're back with World Today. I'm Dinghan in Beijing.

Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek has revealed its native sparse attention or NSA, a new mechanism designed to enhance the efficiency of long-context training and inference in AI models.

DeepSeek has recently gained global attention triggering an artificial intelligence revolution here in China. Popular Chinese applications like WeChat and Baidu have announced the adaptation of the DeepSeek AI model. It is also empowering cross-border e-commerce businesses by streamlining logistic issues, ordering, management, and employee training.

And in the meantime, several Chinese cities such as Shenzhen are using DeepSeq to optimize their public services and boost their local government efficiencies. So for more, my colleague Zhao Yang spoke with Dr. Yan Liang, professor of economics with William Mudd University.

So Yan, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek reviewed native sparse attention or NSA. So what is it? Well, the MSA or the so-called native sparse attention is a technique that is used in machine learning. This is to improve computational efficiency by reducing the complexity of analyzing a very large amount of tokens.

So what this does is it's going to limit the number of tokens interactions. Instead of computing attention scores all possible pairs of tokens,

this functionality will focus on only a subset of tokens based on the attention matrix. So what it essentially does is it's going to help to reduce the computational cost by focusing only just a subset of tokens, as I mentioned. This will require fewer computations, and so it makes faster, but also more memory efficient tokens.

And second benefit of the NSA is that it can improve the scalability, meaning that it can help to handle much longer sequences. So it helps with functions like high resolution image processing. And finally, it really helps to improve efficiency.

So that really helped to, you know, better suited for deployment on some of the resources constrained devices. Imagine you're having a cell phone, right? You need to run this AI and this NSA can really help to improve the functionality and efficiency of

without commanding a lot of computational powers on your cell phone. And so I think this is very essential for the future of AI to improve efficiency and improve the applicability in all kinds of devices and different industries. So what can we expect from DeepSeq in changing our lives?

Well, I think deep seek and other large language models can really be applied in many different industries, you know, going from automobile industries to healthcare, finance, e-commerce, manufacturing, telecommunication, you name it, and education, of course.

So right now, I think in China, many companies are already announcing or already integrated AIs in their products. So we know, for example, eight EV companies, including BYD and others, have already announced that they're going to install DeepSea.

for the autonomous driving. And there are many financial security companies, telecommunication companies, smartphones, also called computing operators like Alibaba, Huawei, and many of them are...

of offering ways for the clients to assess DeepSea's latest model. So that means, you know, DeepSea is going to be integrated in many of the industries, many of the products that would affect our daily lives, make some of these tasks much easier and also efficiency much more efficient. And so I think that is really going to help to improve our daily lives, our work for the better.

And what are the potential implications of large land-grant model providers announcing the free services for the industry as a whole?

Well, as I mentioned, I think, you know, there are many industries could really utilize AI to improve their functionalities, efficiencies. And on the other hand, I think for these AI models, they also have many different ways to provide enterprise solutions, to create a content and marketing, and they're able to provide better customer support and engagements.

They're able to help with data analysis, education, and so on and so forth. So I think it's really a win-win sort of cooperation, right, between these AI developers and also a varieties of industries. So that would create a very nice ecosystem where, you know, more monetization and commodification of AI in a very accessible and affordable way would help to propel the AI development even further. So that could create a very nice virtuous cycle.

And in what ways do you think this ongoing development of AI can contribute to an increase in the consumer spending in the long run?

I think that's a very interesting question. I think, you know, with AI, again, it's able to be integrated in many different sectors to improve efficiency and improve the functionality. I think this will prompt consumers to spend more. So one of the examples is, you know, when you think about tourism or travel, you know, with the AI assistance, you might be able to

find better itineraries, you may be able to find better accommodations and so on and so forth. And so that may incentivize you to travel more, right? The other possibility is if your smartphone has this AI integration, it helps to enhance the functionality of your phone. Let's say you do a search or you have certain entertainment functions on your phone

and AI makes these functions work better for you, then you might have more incentives to upgrade your phone and so on and so forth. So I think in a way it would help to improve the products and the services that we enjoy. And so in that sense, it could help to incentivize more consumption.

Well, DeepSeek reviewed NSA, and this comes as the global AI competition continues to heat up. And we know that Elon Musk XAI unveiled its latest AI model, Grok 3. So how do you view the heating up of the global AI competition? And what are Chinese companies' position in it?

Well, I think the Grok 3, it is an improvement from the previous version. It boasts itself for having enhanced computational power and also specialized reasoning features. That's going to be helpful for more interactive and real-time user experience.

But that said, I think China's advantages are really unique. And China doesn't just have a one language model. In fact, China is making a lot of different AI models. We know there is the Alibaba's one series, Baidu has ErnieBots, ByteDance has Doubao, Tencent has Huanyuan.

And so there are many different AI models in China. And also, as I mentioned earlier, this has been established as a very coherent and efficient ecosystem, right? From these language models to cloud services to now the semiconductor industry catching up

and so on and so forth. So I think China's advantages are still very unique, not to mention with the open source AI, you know, like DeepSeek, with their development costs being so low, only a fraction of ChatGPT or Grok, this means this technology can be really generally applied, right, and can be afforded by many of the industries and companies. And so I think the commodification and commerce side of it

commercialization and monetization of AI, I think would also give China's AI technology another boost, right? Because there are more users, there are more ready users and help these AI companies to raise funds to continue to develop their technologies.

So I think, you know, from both the cost, from the technology, from the efficiency, from the big market, right, to adopt this technology. I think with all these advantages, I think China is still a leading country in developing and adopting AI technology.

It's very interesting when you look at the DSEEC, right, the core clinicians, they're all natively educated. And that just means that, you know, the Chinese education system has really helped to cultivate these tailings. That's a huge tailing pool. So I think from both the quantity and quality, I do think that China has the tailing dividend and the tailing pool to support its AI industries development.

Dr. Yan Liang, professor of economics with William Mudd University, speaking with my colleague Zhao Yang. Coming up, clean energy contributed 10% to China's GDP in 2024, according to new analysis. We'll be back. You're listening to World Today. I'm Dinghan in Beijing.

China's clean energy sector contributed a record 10% to the country's GDP last year. That's according to a new study by Carbon Brief, a UK-based website specializing in the science and policy of climate change.

The study, based on official reports and industry reports as well, is highlighting the growing role of renewables like solar, wind, and EVs in China's economy. Sales and investments in clean technology surpassed 13.5 trillion yuan or nearly 2 trillion U.S. dollars.

and experts say this very rapid expansion is not only driving economic growth, but also strengthening China's energy security and environmental commitments. For more, my colleague Ge Anna earlier spoke with Dr. Chen Jiahe, Chief Investment Officer with Novum Aki Technologies.

Let's start with the big picture here. A 10% contribution to GDP from clean energy is definitely a significant figure. Could you please walk us through what this milestone means for China's economic future and its global position in the clean energy sector?

Well, this 10 percent contribution to the GDP from China's clean energy really shows us that China's strategy to develop the clean energy has achieved a pretty successful degree after so many years of hard working. I mean, if you look at China's GDP, it is already quite large. So 10 percent of this large GDP is not a small number. And if you look at the clean energy right now in China, including things like wind power

solar power, new energy vehicle, all these kinds of things. You can see that China's clean energy industry is already a very large and pretty competitive industry. And it is not only supplying products for Chinese economy alone. It is also exporting a lot of products to the global economy and contributed significantly to the environment protection of both China and

the world. So this really tells us that this is quite a competitive industry that China is having right now. Many countries have been investing heavily in clean energy sectors today, and China is no exception. Then what are the long-term strategic considerations behind China's continuous investment in the area? Well,

Well, this is a very long-term vision saying that China chose to develop its clean energy industry. I mean, we started working on this back, I think, almost two decades ago. And China said, we must develop our clean energy. And this is basing on a few things. First of all, we can't keep on relying on traditional energy, I mean, like oil and coal. I mean, one thing is that they don't really last very long. I mean, the global oil is

is having a limited supply and will only be able to sustain economic growth for probably just a few decades. And after that, you know, you have no choice. And the second is that they just produce too much pollution and too much carbon emission that, you know, in the short term contributed to the air pollution and in the long term,

which resulted in the global warming, which is, you know, it can result in something that no one can ever see because this changes the global climate. This is really a dangerous thing. So China said, we must develop this. We have to, you know,

transfer towards the clean energy. And there's also another reason is that if you look at clean energy, its growth needs no natural resources. You don't have to locate in Middle East to do that. You have to go to a lot of factories, a lot of hardworking and intelligent engineers to make this out. And China is just capable of doing that. So China said about almost two decades ago that we must develop clean energy. And we started working really hard on that. I think China has, you know,

reduced to the GDP growth by some extent because we kept on putting so much investment towards the development of clean energy.

So this is a costly process when we were developing it. But once this industry is built, it became so competitive and it's really helped the environment of the world. We've seen the rapid expansion of industries like solar power, electric vehicles and batteries in China. We know the government phased out subsidies for the EV industry, for example, long time ago, but the sector continues to expand at an impressive rate.

What do you think has been the key driver behind this continued growth? Well, the subsidy is only a very

periodic thing. I mean, it lasted for a few years and it stimulated the growth in the very beginning. The main reason for the government to give subsidy is not because without subsidy China can't have these industries, but they just try to reduce the burdens of companies and speed up the growth of these industries. But if you look at the competitiveness of China's industries, they're not very

basically relying on the subsidy. I mean, the subsidy is long gone story. I mean, they're not subsidizing anymore. The reason that China's new energy industry is so competitive at this moment is because of the

large market scale that China is having because you have a very large market and the economics of scale is working in this industry so that you can have very low cost and very good quality of production. Another reason is also because China has so much

So many factories and so many hardworking, clever engineers. I mean, China has a huge amount of university graduates every single year. They are very good at math. They are very good at physics and engineering, you know, computing, all these kind of things. And these people just work in China's factories and companies and they make out this whole industry. This is probably the most competitive thing for China's new energy industry.

I couldn't agree more that subsidies cannot create competitiveness as you pointed out.

And if we look at the analysis here, solar power, EVs and batteries have played a major role in the growth of Chinese clean technology. And among these, EVs and vehicle batteries contributed 39% of the overall value of China's clean energy economy last year. The EV and vehicle battery sector has been so dominant. But do you think this proportion will change in the future?

Well, that's a very good question. It's very hard to predict. I mean, what we do know is that the EVs and batteries will grow and other parts of the new energy will grow. But if you talk about the proportion, it's pretty bold prediction that I have to make. But I do have my personal opinion that I think this proportion will decrease in the future. Because if you look at the whole new energy industry, it's a really large industry. It

contains so many things. I mean, for example, the power generated by wind and solar power, the power storage system, which is a huge project that can cost you trillions of yuan to invest. And these things are not starting that large compared with the new energy vehicle and batteries. I mean, China is now having a very matured production line and industry of

of new batteries and new energy vehicles, but that doesn't mean that China's new energy industry will concentrate on these two sectors alone. There are just way too many things to do. So in the future, if you look for the next two or three decades, I would say the proportion of new energy vehicle and batteries in the whole industry of China's new energy will decrease, but they will grow compared with themselves, but the proportion will possibly decrease in the future.

Finally, with China setting targets for carbon neutrality by 2060, what do you see as the next steps for the country in maintaining this clean energy momentum? And how might other nations draw inspiration from China's Green Revolution? Well, I'd say China has...

China has to keep on investing and innovating if we want to achieve this target by 2060, which is about 35 years from now. We have to invest in a lot of money. I mean, currently China still uses about 60 or 70 percent of traditional energy to fuel its economy. So we have to develop so much things. We have to build so many solar panel plants.

production factories. We have to build up so many wind power generators and we have to build a huge amount of power storage system. I read the report that that cost about 4 trillion yuan to do that. So it's a long way process. We have to invest in a lot of money. Also, the technology needs to be improved. I mean, currently, if you look at China,

look at that China and United States are both working on what we call the controlled nuclear fusion. But if you ask the people, the scientists, how many years do you think this will replace our current energy? They said probably at least 50 years. So that's a very long period of time. It's a long picture. So China has to keep on investing and we have to keep on not only investing the money, but also work hard on the innovation. So this is also something that other countries are

can learn from China's experience that the government and the companies have to be active to take the responsibilities of investment and innovation, although this might not generate too much return in the current moment. But if you talk about the future, if you have a long vision, you just have to do that. Dr. Chen Jiahe, Chief Investment Officer with Novum Aki Technologies, talking to my colleague Ge Anna.

Coming up, the Parliament of Vietnam has approved an $8 billion railway link to China. Stay tuned.

You're listening to World Today, I'm Dinghan in Beijing. The Parliament of Vietnam has approved plans for an $8 billion US dollar rail link from its largest northern port city to the border with China. The route will stretch 390 kilometers from the port city of Haiphong to the mountainous city of Lao Cai, which borders the Chinese province of Yunnan.

It will also be running through the capital city of Hanoi. It is one of the two railway links to China planned by Vietnam. The Southeast Asian country is currently aligning its two corridors one belt initiative with the belt and road initiative. So joining us now on the line is Dr. Rong Ying, Chair Professor with the School of International Studies, Sichuan University. Thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you for having me. So it is reported in media that China will, over the course of the construction of this project, will provide some funding through loans for the project. And if we talk about the future trajectory of the program here, the wish on the Vietnamese side is that they want it to be operational by the year 2030. So first of all, what

What do you make of the economic potentials that could be created by this project?

Well, certainly I think this project is going to be bringing about a huge economic sort of significant impact for Vietnam, which I think is undergoing dramatic sort of changes in terms of economic growth, the mode of economic growth, and the target, which I think has been just

raised from 6.5 to 7 to 8, which I think with that, the

project now has been adopted as it's been proved by the parliament, we are going to see certainly more in sort of a kind of big impetus for the fulfillment of this target. And certainly it will take over quite a few years to complete. But I think the most important thing is that with the sort of building of

of this railway, which is

constitutes part of the initiative, the two corridors and one so-called initiative, we're going to see more and more economic benefits bringing to both China and Vietnam, particularly in terms of fulfilling that, I mean, implementing the agreement for kind of cross-border economic cooperation projects and to build a

kind of safe, secure, and reliable supply and value chain between the two sides. So, by the way, how is the status quo with regard to infrastructure holding Vietnam back when we talk about this country's ambition regarding development of its own manufacturing sector?

yeah that's a great question i think the sort of uh problems uh that vietnam's uh and particularly in this part of region northern part of vietnam where it's been very closely related to china i mean the transportation transport problems the bottleneck issues has been very uh huge

damaging to the economic development. I think it's been widely and publicly recognized by the officials in charge. They do have, I think, road connections to China and also have a railway, but it's a very old railway built by the French colonists.

100 years ago and it is not a kind of standard one. I mean, we're talking about the gauge. So with the new upgrading and the building of a new railway, which is going to be standard and that would make it possible to raise the speed from 50 kilometers per hour to 160 kilometers at maximum. And it would, of course,

also help improve the connectivity between the two sides. So we are going to definitely see that that bottleneck issues that problems caused by the

the sort of connectivity, the the the outdated facilities of these rails are going to be greatly improved for the goods of the development. So in a bigger picture sense, when we talk about the geopolitics or the political relations, say between Beijing and Hanoi, actually, we know during the Biden administration, we saw some attempts

by Washington to try to drive a wedge between China and Vietnam. We saw Biden once paid a one-day yet high-profile visit to Hanoi when he was the president. But when we talk about the business front, I guess for many of the multinational corporations, for those multinational giants that are already running business,

Certain manufacturing facilities in Vietnam like Samsung and Foxconn, they actually rely on a regular flow of components from China. So if we talk about this issue from a pro-business perspective, does that mean Vietnamese manufacturing future or this country's broader economic future will somehow require Hanoi to maintain very good relations with Beijing?

well definitely i think economics plays a very important role and let me just respond briefly to the question the first part of the question it is true that over the decades we have seen repeated efforts

attempts by the United States and others tried to drive a wedge between China and Vietnam. They turned out to be just the opposite, closer and closer economic and political relationship. By the way, this initiative, I mean, the road is something that has been approved. The project was has been one of the outcome of the

recent visit by President Xi to Vietnam and also reciprocated by the new sort of leadership of Vietnam that as a flagship project for building a community of shared future with the two sides. So the economics, economic logic is there, but more importantly, I think with the

the coming of the Trump administration, Trump 2.0, we are going to see more and more challenges shared between by China and Vietnam, where it would make even the two sides to work closer.

economically and I think politically. So we are going to see a closer economic integration, closer political relationship, and I think closer effort, more joint effort to work together to try to manage, to address the concerns, the challenges arising from the

new dynamic caused by Trump administration. Your point is well taken. Thank you very much for joining us. Rong Ying, Chair Professor with the School of International Studies, Sichuan University. That's all the time for this edition of World Today. To listen to this episode again or to catch up on our previous episodes, download our podcast by searching World Today. I'm Dinghan in Beijing. Bye for now.