Editor's Note: As China launches its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), policymakers are strengthening coordination between the "Export to China" and "Shopping in China" campaigns. The effort signals a clear commitment to expanding imports while promoting high-quality consumption. To explore what this means for global business, we invited executives from multinational corporations to share their perspectives on the opportunities in China's vast market, the role of their China operations in global strategy, and their outlook for the years ahead.

Q1 China's GDP grew 5 percent in 2025, reaching 140.19 trillion yuan ($20.52 trillion). For 2026, the government targets growth of between 4.5 percent and 5 percent, with a planned deficit ratio of around 4 percent. How do you assess the credibility and policies backing this target? Amid moderating global demand, what does China's relative growth certainty mean for your company's global capital allocation, earnings outlook and investor expectations? Does the combination of proactive fiscal policies and accommodative monetary measures reinforce your confidence in sustaining or expanding operations in China?

Ni: The 4.5-5 percent growth target reflects a pragmatic balance, prioritizing quality and sustainability amid rising uncertainties. It is underpinned by proactive fiscal and monetary policies, alongside a continued focus on developing new productive forces, advancing sustainability and strengthening industrial chain resilience.

Amid slowing global demand, China's relative growth certainty serves as a stabilizer for us. It reinforces our confidence in the market's long-term potential and highlights China's strategic role as both a key demand market and a central hub for supply chain optimization and regional coordination. At Kuehne+Nagel, the strategic importance of the China market continues to grow. To support Chinese companies' overseas expansion, we are strengthening resources and capabilities across our global network, including bolt-on investments and acquisitions.

Abebe: I am very pleased to see the importance the Chinese government places on its 2026 economic growth expectations and the increased policy support. The Chinese market is a vital pillar of Ethiopian Airlines' global route network, and its stability directly impacts our cargo volume and passenger load factors. We also look forward to leveraging China's proactive fiscal policies to drive demand for freight in categories such as machinery and cross-border e-commerce parcels between China and Africa. By utilizing our hub in Addis Ababa, we aim to facilitate global trade flows and serve as a robust aerial bridge between China and Africa.

Zhou: China's steady economic growth profoundly benefits livelihoods, fostering higher standards of living for its population. This includes growing consumer expectations for safe and nutritious diet options. As China's population becomes more urbanized and economically empowered, we observe increased appreciation for premium protein offerings, driving our strategic focus on product quality and sustainability.

Stable growth, underpinned by proactive fiscal policy and accommodative monetary measures, also strengthens the foundation for ongoing investment. This further reinforces our confidence in China's future and our continued engagement here. China's stable growth supports economic resilience and drives improvements in dietary patterns. This dynamic reinforces our commitment to expanding operations, investing in innovation and contributing to China's evolving food and feed landscape for the years to come.

Xu: China insists on high-level opening-up and continuously improves the business environment, offering Airbus a more stable environment for business development. The resilience and certainty demonstrated by the Chinese supply chain have also strengthened Airbus' confidence in continuously increasing its investment in China. Airbus inaugurated its second A320 Family FAL in Tianjin to support the global A320 Family ramp-up plan. Meanwhile, the Airbus Aircraft Lifecycle Service Center in Chengdu, Sichuan province, has begun aircraft dismantling and recycling, marking cooperation between Airbus and China covering the entire lifecycle of aircraft.

Q2 In 2025, China's exports rose 6.1 percent, newly established foreign-invested enterprises increased by 19.1 percent, and research and development intensity reached 2.8 percent of GDP. Against the backdrop of global supply chain reconfiguration, is China's role in your global strategy expanding? How do you evaluate China's integrated advantages — manufacturing depth, innovation capacity, infrastructure and market scale — in supporting your production networks and supply resilience? Does China function primarily as a market, a production base, an innovation hub, or increasingly all three within your corporate architecture?

Ni: Amid accelerating supply chain restructuring, China plays a multidimensional role for Kuehne+Nagel, as a key market, a critical hub and a capability center. Continued export momentum, rising foreign investment and sustained R&D underline China's strengths in manufacturing depth, innovation intensity, infrastructure efficiency and market scale.

China is both a major production and consumption base and a key gateway connecting Asia-Pacific with global markets. Its advanced port clusters, air hubs and sophisticated logistics infrastructure continue to strengthen its role across sea and air logistics. In the ongoing reconfiguration of global supply chains, China's role is being reinforced through diversification with the country remaining an irreplaceable node for high-value manufacturing and innovation-intensive activities.

Abebe: Amid the restructuring of global industrial chains, the stable growth of China's economy and technological innovation are driving rapid upgrades of supply chain systems. For Ethiopian Airlines, the Chinese market has become a core strategic pivot for our global strategy. China is not only a destination for passenger travel, but also a key point of origin in the global cargo network. We have launched routes to 11 cities in China, including the newly inaugurated freight route to Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, precisely because we recognize the distinct industrial characteristics of different regions within China. The Chinese market serves as an indispensable "Asian hub" within our global network connecting Europe, Africa and South America.

Zhou: China is a strategic market for LDC, with its vast consumer base, deep manufacturing capabilities, robust innovation ecosystem and comprehensive infrastructure. LDC has continued to deepen its production footprint in China, investing in four greenfield projects to enhance its processing capabilities. The company has also established a global R&D center in Shanghai and launched two specialty feed ingredients production lines in Tianjin, transforming research outcomes into innovative products.

These developments reflect China's importance as a key market, production hub and innovation center for LDC. We are looking to further enhance our presence and deepen local partnerships, with a goal to ensure safe, reliable and sustainable food and agriculture supply chains for current and future generations.

Xu: China has great advantages in operational efficiency and resilience. China's supply chain has shown great resilience while its talent team and product quality are also very competitive. Airbus focuses on deepening and enlarging its supply chain in China with the "local for local" strategy, in collaboration with both State-owned enterprises and the private sector. Currently, around 200 suppliers in China support the production of Airbus commercial aircraft. We invest in high-quality industrial capabilities in China in a systematic way and are committed to serving as a model of cooperation in the high-tech aerospace industry between China and Europe.

Q3 China is advancing the unified national market, with an urbanization rate of 67.9 percent and total retail sales surpassing 50 trillion yuan. As domestic demand expands, what structural opportunities does this vast, increasingly integrated market present for your portfolio, distribution channels, and localization strategy? Does deeper market unification reduce operational fragmentation and compliance costs? How do you position your brand and product mix to capture demand from both top-tier cities and fast-growing lower-tier markets?

Ni: We believe the core opportunity of a large, unified national market lies not only in scale expansion, but in converting scale into efficiency, innovation and long-term competitiveness under a unified regulatory framework. The unified market enhances long-term certainty by lowering cross-regional operating costs and enabling scalable, standardized operations nationwide. Greater market integration also enables logistics providers to deliver cross-regional, integrated supply chain solutions more efficiently.

The combined effect of the development of a unified national market and domestic demand growth is driving structural demand for high-value logistics and supply chain solutions. This includes nationwide distribution and fulfillment networks, as well as end-to-end and more resilient supply chain solutions supporting manufacturing upgrading.

Abebe: For Ethiopian Airlines, China's efforts to advance the unified national market represent a precise structural and regional opportunity. As China's middle-income population continues to expand, demand for fresh, high-quality products from Africa is surging. Our cold-chain logistics capabilities will directly connect to Chinese kitchens, enabling Ethiopian coffee, Kenyan flowers and South African citrus fruits to be efficiently distributed nationwide via logistics hubs such as Zhengzhou, Henan province, and Ezhou, Hubei province.

Meanwhile, China's western region is undergoing rapid urbanization, generating strong demand for infrastructure, engineering machinery and consumer goods. Through our routes to Urumqi and Chengdu, we are well-positioned to support enterprises in western China in expanding globally.

Zhou: China's unified national market presents significant structural opportunities in line with LDC's growth strategy. We are seeing important demand growth for high-quality proteins, with China's annual per capita meat consumption increasing from 62 kilograms in 2014 to 72 kg in 2024 and leading to animal feed market expansion in the country.

Feed ingredient market growth by 7 percent year-on-year directly supports our strategy to diversify into value-added product lines and pursue further operational integration across value chains. Deeper market unification is reducing operational fragmentation and compliance costs, enabling the streamlining of logistics and regulatory processes across regions. This allows LDC to optimize supply chains and better serve our customers. Our investments in feed ingredients empower us to deliver tailored solutions for local market needs.

Xu: China is the second-largest economy with the largest aviation population in the world. Airbus is confident in the prospects of China's civil aviation market and predicts that China will require more than 9,500 new passenger aircraft and 730 freighters for fleet renewal and expansion. Airbus will support the high-quality development of Chinese airlines with highly efficient, new generation aircraft such as the A220, A320neo, A330neo, A350 and A350F models, as well as high-quality customer services in training, maintenance, materials, digital tech and connectivity.

Q4 China's trade-in program generated over 2.6 trillion yuan in sales in 2025, alongside the "Shopping in China" and "Export to China" initiatives. China's exports grew 6.1 percent year-on-year. How is your company aligning its China strategy to capture both domestic consumption upgrades and export-oriented opportunities? Do you see China increasingly as a global production and innovation base serving international markets? How are you balancing local demand expansion with China's role in your global export ecosystem?

Ni: We do not see China simply as a domestic market or an export platform, but as a strategic market combining both roles, driven by rising demand for high-quality, localized logistics services and China's continued role as a core global manufacturing and export hub.

China's consumption and trade are mutually reinforcing, evolving within a unified supply chain system. Supported by the upgrading of China's manufacturing base, from "Made in China" to "Designed and Created in China", together with an advanced logistics infrastructure, this dual role underpins our continued investment in China and enables us to better support customers' growth by fully leveraging our global network.

Abebe: The initiatives by the Chinese government to promote consumption and stabilize foreign trade are highly aligned with Ethiopian Airlines' business model. By operating direct cargo flights from key Chinese hubs, we transport China-made electronic products and cross-border e-commerce parcels to destinations in Africa, Europe and South America.

By leveraging the distribution capabilities of the Addis Ababa air cargo hub, we also transport fresh African products such as avocados, coffee and seafood to China, meeting rising demand driven by consumption upgrading through the speed and efficiency of air freight.

The launch of the Urumqi route directly connects western China's consumer market with South America, Europe and Africa, further enhancing our global cargo network. We believe Ethiopian Airlines will contribute further to cargo and passenger infrastructure development in collaboration with Chinese companies.

Zhou: LDC has played a key role in ensuring safe, reliable and sustainable flows of agricultural goods, reinforcing our position as a trusted partner in the world's food and agriculture supply chain. Today, we remain committed to fulfilling this key role in China and globally.

We are looking to expand our integrated specialty phospholipid production model — pioneered through innovation and advanced oilseed processing capabilities in China — to other LDC plants worldwide. Meanwhile, we have launched various plant-based food and feed ingredients and solutions, tailored to evolving needs in China.

Looking ahead, we believe that China's integrated market and innovation-driven environment will continue to power both local and global developments.

Xu: Transporting goods to overseas destinations requires efficient logistics while also driving the increasing demand for advanced freighters. The new generation long-range A350F freighters and the A320/A330 Family P2F (passenger-to-freighter) aircraft meet the needs of different scenarios, support Chinese cargo airlines in setting up their global cargo networks and create secure and resilient logistics chains for Chinese products going global.

A significant proportion of the Chinese supply chain is also delivering work packages outside of China, helping Chinese companies integrate into Airbus' global supply chain, thus empowering them with more opportunities to expand their business in the international aviation sector.

Q5 China last year reduced energy intensity by 5.1 percent, raised the nonfossil energy share to 21.7 percent, and expanded new-type energy storage capacity beyond 130 gigawatts. Artificial intelligence and advanced technologies remain at the forefront globally. Where do you see the strongest partnership potential in China's green transition and AI-driven industrial upgrading? Are you expanding investment in renewables, digitalization, smart manufacturing or carbon management solutions? How central is China to your global sustainability roadmap and next-generation technology deployment?

Ni: China's pace and scale of progress in sustainability and digitalization are leading the way on a global level. China is no longer merely an implementation market for global sustainability strategies, but is increasingly becoming a co-creator of rules, models and capabilities.

For Kuehne+Nagel, China is not only a key market for deploying sustainable and digital solutions, but also a platform where we work closely with customers and partners to develop, test and scale new models and technologies. Many solutions first validated in China are now being replicated and rolled out across our global network as scalable best practices. We see the convergence of sustainability and AI as a key driver of future collaboration.

Abebe: We have noted China's progress in reducing energy intensity and its breakthroughs in new energy technologies, which provide valuable references for exploring the application of sustainable aviation fuel and upgrading airport ground support systems.

Meanwhile, the deeper application of AI aligns closely with Ethiopian Airlines' strategic priorities in enhancing transit efficiency at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport and optimizing its African route network scheduling.

We look forward to exploring opportunities with Chinese partners by combining China's digital solutions with Ethiopian Airlines' global route network and geographic hub advantages.

Zhou: China's recent strides in reducing energy intensity, expanding the share of nonfossil energy and rapidly scaling energy storage capacity present opportunities for global partners in relation to renewable energy and innovation-driven industrial upgrading.

At LDC, we are aligned with China's ambitions in this area, recognizing innovation, digitalization and sustainability as strategic growth enablers. As such, we are committed to leveraging innovative technologies to drive operational excellence and efficiency, as well as environmental stewardship across value chains.

Sustainability also remains central to our business model and operations. In China, for example, we have increased the use of renewable energy sources to reduce our operational carbon footprint.

Xu: China is developing new sustainable energy sources and has unique advantages in developing the sustainable aviation fuel industrial chain. Airbus has been playing a catalytic role in developing the SAF ecosystem in China by using and promoting SAF, working with stakeholders to explore the large-scale production of SAF and contributing to the development of sustainable aviation in China.

Airbus China has received a value-added tax license, enabling it to offer more digital service solutions to Chinese airlines to enhance their operational efficiency, such as Skywise, a big-data platform used for real-time aircraft health monitoring and preventive maintenance. For smart manufacturing, Airbus has set up its China R&D and innovation center in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. The center is advancing the implementation of several new technology projects for the Airbus sites in Europe, Tianjin and Aircraft Lifecycle Service Center in Chengdu.