Business leaders attending the annual
Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit said that despite the
September 11 attack on the United States they expected that
consumer confidence would be restored soon world-wide thanks to the
efforts of APEC-member economies.
Jimsoo Kim, executive vice president of the Seoul-based Cheil
Jedang Corp., the largest food and entertainment company in the
Republic of Korea, said his company always designs or readjusts its
business plans and strategies after learning the new trends and
market needs in the world, especially those discussed at the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO meetings.
This is an example of what many APEC participants called the
intangible and far-reaching impact of the annual CEO Summit, always
considered a stage for people to exchange views and ideas and raise
practical proposals to improve the economic situation in the
Asia-Pacific region.
"It is also important and meaningful for government officials and
entrepreneurs from different countries to sit down to have
constructive talks to communicate with each other and jointly
understand and improve the world economy," Kim said.
Sharing Kim's views was Yang Yiming, president of Changjiang
(Yangtze) Industrial Group in north China's Liaoning Province and
another of the more than 500 business executives from the 21
APEC-member economies who attended the summit that opened Thursday
in Shanghai.
Yang hailed the CEO meeting as a place to generate concrete ways of
dealing with economy-related challenges since it brings together
top executives from the whole Asia-Pacific region. It is imperative
for Chinese enterprises, the state-owned enterprises in particular,
to absorb updated management methodologies to transform old ones
based in the planned economy, Yang said.
As
an example, Yang offered The Yangtze Shopping Mall of his group
which grew into a successful supermarket in Liaoning after adopting
the management style of the US-based Walmart retail giant that he
learned from a previous CEO Summit.
President George C. Hsu of US Engelhard Asia Pacific Inc., supplier
of environmental technologies with headquarters in the United
States, said that the CEO meeting offered a great chance for him to
exchange ideas and strengthen ties, especially in high and new
technology, with its counterparts in the region.
As
to the Sept. 11 terrorism attack on the US, many CEOs said that
they expected negative effects of this event such as higher costs
for goods would be temporary and everything would turn back to
normal soon. American Wayne A. Hinman, vice president of Air
Products and Chemicals, Inc., for instance said he expects that
people in the US will soon again be shopping, traveling and
preparing for the big Christmas holiday, as usual.
(china.org.cn by Guo Xiaohong, staff reporter October 19, 2001)