Jan. 24 (NBD) -- World Economic Forum Annual Meeting kicked off on Tuesday in Switzerland's Davos, which was struck by the snowstorm.

More than 70 national leaders, 340 more government ministers and over 2000 business leaders are expected to participate in the forum, making the new record numbers of leaders of countries as well as international institutions.

The theme of the 2018 annual meeting is "Creating a shared future in a fractured world".

Given that the year 2018 is the tenth year since the outbreak of global financial crisis, the issue that how to prevent another financial crisis has triggered heated discussion during the forum. 

Photo/VCG

In recent years, the global context has greatly changed, and geostrategic fissures have re-emerged on multiple fronts with wide-ranging political, economic and social consequences. Ahead of the meeting, some experts believed that a gradually fractured world could have massive risks. 

According to the Global Risks Report 2018 released by the World Economic Forum on 17th of this month, among 100 people who was interviewed during the survey, 59 percent of them held the view that the world risk will increase in 2018. With regard to the financial risk which is considered as one of the most important risks amongst all, the experts worried that countries' improved economic growth may lead to people's neglect of the long-standing structural risks behind the global economic and financial system. 

At the sub-forum titled the Next Financial Crisis?, Fang Xinghai, vice president of China Securities Regulatory Commission answered the question about how China would prevent financial crisis. Fang explained that China found many problems years ago, such as the high macro debt ratio and debt of non-financial companies, the latter to GDP up to 250 percent, and the government started to take measures two years ago.

The good news is that the debt ratio first stopped to rise last year and the broad money (M2) climbed 8.2 percent year on year, with a new record low growth rate, which indicated the government's hard work, Fang introduced.

Investors agreed that China's prompt measurements to prevent the financial risks are beneficial to all the countries around the world.

Besides, how to tackle the fourth industrial revolution is also a hot topic this year.

As the technology gradually affected the digital technology and the economy in recent years, the fourth industrial revolution characterized by the technology progress and digital economy is expected to arrive soon.

Therefore, how to effectively make use of the positive and avoid adverse influence brought by the revolution during the transformation of the world economy has been another focus of the forum.

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology is regarded as a main driving force of the new revolution, but experts warned that the negative effect caused by the development need be prevented.

For example, the delegates from the world renowned consulting firm McKinsey & Company disclosed during the meeting that technology development related to AI will result in a large number of job seekers' failure to find the suitable positions. AI has superior learning capabilities than human beings, which made humans less competitive . People should take actions to meet such challenge.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn