The square at the site of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2023 in Boao, south China's Hainan Province on March 27, 2023. The BFA is scheduled to held in Boao from March 28 to 31. Photo:VCG

Despite the US-led decoupling push and blockade, China will remain a global manufacturing hub thanks to the country's vast economy and strong industrial chain, in particular for high-end manufacturers, entrepreneurs and scholars attending the Boao Forum for Asia 2023 said. 

Industries being relocated from China have been talked about a lot in recent days, but panelists shared the consensus that China will continue to be a hub of global manufacturing for the coming decade or longer, and the so-called "relocation" to the world's other regions could take a very long time. 

The comments were made during a panel themed "The New Landscape of Industrial and Supply Chains," where representatives from China, the US and Italy shared insights on building a globally resilient industrial supply chain. 

The country's vast economy and relatively complete industrial chain means it would be difficult for high-end manufacturing to relocate from China, Yao Yang, dean of the National School of Development of Peking University, said at the panel discussion.

The US has been pushing "decoupling" from China in various ways, including wielding unilateral sanctions in the economic and trade area, arbitrarily moving forward with a "forced sale" of TikTok and conducting an all-round assault on China's semiconductor sector. 

"But higher prices are the US' problem, not China's," Yao said. He elaborated that China's exports remain robust, and the nation could mitigate the impact by diversifying export markets. 

In contrast to US unilateralism, China has been unswervingly pushing for opening-up and global cooperation. For example, China has signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest regional free trade deal, and it has also expressed strong willingness to join the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, which represents the country's steadfast efforts to push regional integration, panelists said. 

Benjamin Simpfendorfer, partner of US management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, flagged the dire consequences of decoupling on the global economy at the panel. He noted that the global supply chain is efficient but fragile, and the percentage of global trade in world GDP is dropping. 

Simpfendorfer told the Global Times that from the industrial and supply chain landscape to geopolitical tensions, many concurrent challenges are not an issue of only one country or a few, but a shared problem that requires all to cooperate and find a joint solution.