On 20 July, H.E. Ambassador Zheng Zeguang delivered a keynote speech at the reception celebrating China-UK business cooperation at the City of London at invitation. About 200 people from the Chinese and British business communities joined the event.

Ambassador Zheng pointed out that in the first half of this year, China's economy continued to recover steadily and demonstrated a positive trend of development, with its GDP growing by 5.5 per cent year-on-year, which was significantly faster than other major economies in the world. At present, China is working to apply the new development philosophy, accelerate the building of a new pattern of development, comprehensively deepen reform and opening up, intensify macro regulation, increase domestic demand, boost confidence, prevent risks, and effectively upgrade and appropriately expand China's economic output.

Ambassador Zheng outlined China's recent measures to promote the initiative and growth of the private sector, expand domestic demand and open up to the outside world at a higher level, stressing that China has a strong political leadership, stable and consistent guidelines and policies, a complete manufacturing system, rich and strong human resources and a huge market, and that the fundamentals of China's long-term economic development remain unchanged. He stressed that those spread pessimistic views about and discredit China will not succeed, and that the Chinese people will rely on their own wisdom and hard work to steadily achieve the goals set out for China’s development.

Ambassador Zheng pointed out that China and the UK have broad prospects of cooperation in areas such as the digital economy, trade and finance, and green energy. The two countries should adhere to the principle of mutual benefit and win-win, provide a level-playing field for each other's business communities, and break new ground in collaboration in new areas. Over the years, the City of London has played an instrumental role in promoting China-UK economic, trade and financial cooperation, and it is hoped that it will make new contributions to connecting the businesses of the two countries for mutually beneficial collaboration.