Siemens CEO optimistic about China's economic reforms

DAVOS, Switzerland - "I have full trust and full confidence in China and its leadership, the Five-Year Plan exactly addresses the right things," Joe Kaeser, German conglomerate company Siemens President and CEO, has said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"The global economic growth is going to be 2.6 percent to 2.7 percent, and then China grows maybe between 6.5 and 7 percent. I mean this is actually good," Kaeser commented during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

China's economy grew 6.7 percent year on year in 2016, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data showed Friday.

The NBS said the figure indicated "a good start" for the country's goal of achieving at least 6.5-percent annual growth during the 13th Five-year Plan period (2016-2020).

Kaeser, however, pointed out the challenges that China will face are the Chinese reforms that now bring China from a more developing economy to a leading, first-class digital economy in the manufacturing powerhouse of the world.

"It means that you need to make reforms on the tail-end of technology, like mining, steel, ship building and cement which have passed the life cycle and which need structural reforms," he noted. "This is necessary so that you can add innovation on the front-end of technology."

The CEO said it is quite challenging because there are so many people who are in those jobs, and they need to be retrained for the next generation of new technology.

He recalled that Germany also went through such a cycle in the 1950s and 1960s, when some smaller provinces, which depended 100 percent on coal and steel, had to go through this transition.

"We retrained people. We did a lot of things. So if you want to come on over, we'd be happy to share the experience on how this transition has been made smoothly," Kaeser said.

He noted that the difference between the two countries lies in national condition. "The only one challenge you have is that China is 100 times bigger than our small province. But I think I have the full confidence in China that the 13th Five-year Plan is just exactly right on and now it's about execution."

Siemens has long history to supply various services, including industrial automation, building technologies, drive technology, energy, health care and mobility.

"We are very eager to bring modern manufacturing software to Chinese manufacturing so they are more efficient, high quality and high scale," Kaeser said.