German business leaders: The way forward with China

Celina Chew, President of Bayer Group Greater China

China is a crucial market for Bayer and an important driver for the growth of our business, both in sales as well as in innovation, talent development, partnerships, and new ideas. Bayer came to China early, starting with trade in 1882. Since then, we have continuously invested in China over many years and established an extensive footprint in China.

Celina Chew. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

All our businesses (pharmaceuticals, radiology, consumer health, cropscience, animal health) are active in China. We aim to contribute to the development of China with solutions that meet the needs of the Chinese people. With increasing and aging populations, it is a continuing challenge, both globally and in China, to ensure an adequate supply of safe, nutritious food, and access to healthcare for people. In China, our high quality products and innovations contribute to the efforts to improve access to high quality healthcare services for Chinese people.

We support the modernization of Chinese agriculture and China's drive for supply-side reforms in agriculture, with our products, expertise and technology. The Chinese government's "Comprehensive Health" initiative, including the "Healthy China 2030" roadmap, covers areas such as public health services, environment management, medical industry, better lifestyle, food and drug safety.

Our product portfolio and solutions are very well suited to contribute to these focus areas in a sustainable way. The "Belt and Road" initiative is an exciting and bold direction for China. We believe that more connectivity and exchanges between countries will create more opportunities for economic and social growth for all.

The business and cultural exchanges between China and Germany have been very successful. We appreciate China's efforts to further attract foreign investment, and encourage additional initiatives to open up the Chinese market especially for innovative products and technologies. Greater transparency, consistency and speed in implementation in the regulatory processes would also be welcome.

Veli Polat, Senior Director Sales Greater China Lufthansa Group Airlines

Lufthansa Group Airlines have been proudly serving China for over 90 years and we are the leading European airline group in the country. The major opportunity for us is to extend our great market position in China as one of the largest travel markets with rapid growth worldwide. Our recently signed Joint Venture with Air China will enhance our growth potentials in China and allow us both to offer our passengers the biggest network and highest number of services.

Veli Polat. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

This is good for our customers and for China. The innovation and digitalization level in China does impress me a lot. To secure Lufthansa Group's competitiveness and in an effort to make travelling more efficient, sustainable and attractive, Lufthansa Group has declared 2017 "the year of digitalization and innovation".

The company is investing 500 million Euros by 2020 to create more individualized products and services to improve the customer experience. The topic of green growth becomes very essential in China. Lufthansa Group launched a strategic environmental program in 2008, targeting the areas of fuel efficiency, climate protection and active noise prevention, as well as energy and resource management. We are making advances in all these areas.

As we all know, China is currently the world second largest aviation market. According to IATA, China is set to overtake the US to become the world's largest aviation market by passengers by 2024 as more people take to the skies domestically and internationally. For Lufthansa Group Airlines, China is no doubt one of the most important markets. Our group has high expectations on the Chinese market. For 2017, we do expect to continue our success story and are thankful to our customers choosing our brands Lufthansa, SWISS and Austrian Airlines.

Hubertus Troska, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG, who is responsible for Greater China

China today plays a key role in Daimler's global success, with our business here seeing continued growth, from passenger and commercial vehicles to our financial and mobility services. This is especially thanks to the strength of our Sino-German cooperation with local partners, good relationships with our dealers, and our Chinese customers.

Hubertus Troska. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

We have been intensifying both local R&D and production to highlight the preferences of our Chinese customers, who have made this the largest market worldwide for Mercedes-Benz. Looking ahead, we believe China will remain important for all our business units, as we see potential for further growth here. In line with China's economic development plan, we will meet both opportunities and challenges head on with further innovations and upgraded manufacturing.

We will continuously innovate to bring Chinese customers new technologies, products and services, shaping the future of mobility through connectivity, autonomous driving, sharing and electric mobility – our C.A.S.E. strategy. These major trends are revolutionizing the auto industry, perhaps nowhere faster than in China, and Daimler aims to further contribute to the development of electric mobility here. Through our plans to locally produce electric Mercedes-Benz models, we look forward to continually fulfilling our China commitment with deepened cooperation and further strategic investment to this end.