The founder and president of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, recently sat down for an interview with a Chinese state media outlet and proclaimed that China was a “role model” for other nations.
Schwab, 84, made the remarks during an interview with CGTN’s Tian Wei on the sidelines of last week’s APEC CEO Summit in Bangkok, Thailand.
Schwab said he respects China’s “tremendous” achievements in modernizing its economy over the past 40 years.
FILE: World Economic Forum (WEF) Founder and CEO Klaus Schwab sits as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (not pictured) addresses delegates, during the final day of the WEF in Davos, Switzerland, on May 26, 2022.
(REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann)
“I think it’s a model for many countries to follow,” Schwab said, before adding that he believes that each country should make its own decisions about which system it wants to adapt.
“I think we have to be very careful about imposing systems. But the Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for a good number of countries,” Schwab said.
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Schwab did not elaborate on which aspects of the Chinese model appealed to him, or which would be beneficial to other countries.
China is governed by the absolute rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which does not allow people to practice the religion or belief of their choice and does not tolerate dissent or criticism.
FILE – German Klaus Schwab, founder and president of the World Economic Forum, WEF, during a press conference in Cologny, near Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, January 10, 2017.
(The Associated Press)
In 2014, the CCP announced a moral ranking system whereby individuals, government organizations, and businesses are ranked based on social credit. Comparisons have been made to the environmental, social and governance, or ESG, scores used by leading financial institutions and global organizations to create a type of social credit system designed to influence behavior and transform society.
Schwab wrote in 2019 that ESG scores are necessary for stakeholder capitalism.
“‘Stakeholder capitalism,’ a model I first proposed half a century ago, positions private corporations as trustees of society and is clearly the best response to today’s social and environmental challenges,” he wrote. “We should use this moment to ensure that stakeholder capitalism remains the new dominant model.”
In 2020, without any form of accountability or transparency, the Chinese government imposed a “national security” law for Hong Kong, which critics say gave authorities a pretext to brutally crack down on pro-democracy activists.
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Most recently, Western countries accused China of sending at least a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities to detention camps, where many said they were tortured, sexually assaulted and forced to give up their language and religion.
Beijing has denied these accusations as a fabrication concocted by Western nations.
FOX Business’s Teny Sahakian contributed to this report.
