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)