China CEO Council Session Report: Digitalizing China—what business impacts are foreseeable?

On June 7, 2018, The Conference Board China Center convened its member companies for the biannual China CEO Council to discuss and dimension unfolding digital developments in China. The objective of the session was to ascertain whether and how the much-hyped digital developments in China—across retail, finance, mobility, energy, production, logistics, and other sectors—portend genuinely transformational impacts on the China marketplace and MNC operating field. Discussions explored perspectives on whether these impacts are unique to China’s unusual commercial system or are materially exportable to international markets. Drill-down discussions parsed the unsustainable, even dysfunctional, features of China’s digital environment from the durable, perhaps even world-leading features, and outlined the critical, near- and longer-term business planning implications for members of The Conference Board across key sectors.