Executives confident about China business
A1 Despite the difficulties and pressure, we are impressed by China's stable economic recovery and strong resilience.
Even in the face of various challenges in 2021, China continues to make the market more stable, open and fair. A better business environment is one of the best proofs of China's growing economic development, and L'Oreal is benefiting a lot from it. We also believe that China's economy will continue to grow steadily in the future, with sustained efforts across the board in science and technology innovation, integrated regional development, rural revitalization, and industrial structure optimization and upgrading.
A2 The world's opportunity is China's opportunity and vice versa.
As the second largest market of L'Oreal Group, China has huge potential with people's increasing aspiration for beauty especially with the world's largest middle-income group. For the L'Oreal group, China has already become seven brands' largest market in the world and the headquarters of North Asia. We hope to drive the development of the "Beauty Triangle" and leverage regional synergy with China's opportunities and contribute more "China wisdom" to the global market.
A3 The implementation of the Foreign Investment Law and many important initiatives of opening-up such as the Free Trade Area and CIIE reflected China's determination to continuously open up and optimize the business environment.
We wish to see some pilot projects aiming for boosting the dual-circulation development pattern, and also help multinational companies to interpret and customize business opportunities and new models that are suitable for companies to play a greater role in China, for China and for the world.
A4 The commitment by China to be carbon neutral by 2060 represents a major milestone for the fight against climate change. I am impressed to witness the strong mobilization taking place across industries following this announcement. This should stimulate innovation and economic development in all sectors related to energy efficiency and clean energy.
A5 We believe China is investable for our business as always.
Changes like anti-monopoly are common practices in market economy countries. We believe that strengthening anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition is an important and regular task of the Chinese government. It is conducive to promoting the formation of a fair competitive market environment, creating a broad space for the development of various market players, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, and better protecting the rights and interests of consumers.