Maximizing structural market evolution

Q3 China's innovation ecosystem has become an increasingly important engine of growth. How do you assess the contribution of artificial intelligence and other frontier technologies to China's productivity growth, industrial upgrading and long-term economic resilience? More broadly, what significance does China's innovation have for global technological progress and the opportunities available to multinational companies?

HAN: China's innovation ecosystem is raising domestic productivity while becoming a global platform for next-generation industrial technologies.

AI is acting as a productivity multiplier. Machine learning embedded across manufacturing, quality control, logistics and predictive maintenance is compressing industrial upgrading cycles that would previously have taken decades. The result is a rapid shift from a digital economy to an intelligent one, where AI is woven into productive infrastructure itself.

Products like ABB Robotics' RobotStudio HyperReality can train robots for every eventuality, closing the sim-to-real gap with 99 percent accuracy using physically accurate simulation. This fundamentally changes how quickly and reliably manufacturers can scale production, reducing costs by up to 40 percent and accelerating time-to-market by 50 percent.

WANG: In the healthcare sector, AI is enhancing R&D efficiency, supporting clinical decisionmaking, optimizing manufacturing processes and improving supply chain management. This digital transformation not only boosts productivity, but also builds a more responsive and agile healthcare ecosystem. CSL is also collaborating with a top university hospital to use AI technology to enhance rare disease diagnosis.

As China's share of global licensing capital increases — combined with regulatory reforms and the deep integration of AI throughout the R&D process — R&D speed and efficiency are being further elevated. This innovation-driven momentum creates a new frontier of win-win collaboration for multinational corporations.

MARZOUKI: China enjoys unique technological strengths and leads in AI development, and the 15th Five-Year Plan emphasizes advancing the "AI+" initiative. We will leverage AI in China to gain deeper consumer insights and better address key trends including the silver economy, healthy longevity and functional nutrition, so as to better meet the needs of Chinese consumers.

At the same time, Chinese innovation is increasingly influencing global markets. More products, technologies and business models developed in China are being adopted internationally.

For multinational companies, this creates greater opportunities for co-innovation, joint R&D and shared technological progress.

FAN: China has built a dynamic innovation ecosystem that combines strong scientific capabilities, a rapidly evolving technology landscape and rich real-world application scenarios. For multinational companies, this creates an environment where new technologies can be developed, tested and scaled quickly, making China an increasingly important source of innovation as well as a key market.

At The Estee Lauder Companies, we are applying AI across multiple stages of our value chain — from delivering more personalized consumer experiences and supporting skin analysis to accelerating scientific research through virtual ingredient screening. These technologies help shorten product development cycles and enable us to bring innovative products to consumers more efficiently.