Chen Jinya, President for Alcoa Asia Pacific and Alcoa China, Alcoa

Your Excellency, Mr. Dominique de Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, honorable Mr. Huang Xiaoxiang, Vice Governor of Sichuan Province, honorable Mr. Ge Honglin, Mayor of Chengdu City, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

Good morning! Please first allow me to extend my gratitude to APCEO, the government of Sichuan Province and the government of Chengdu City for kindly inviting me to the summit!

In the context of global financial crisis, it is of great significance for us to hold this summit in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. I feel so honored to share with you some of my opinions on the current crisis as well as hopes and opportunities this crisis might bring to us.

It is generally acknowledged that the United States went into worldwide economic recession in 2007, and now it is clear that the world economy is suffering a severe financial crisis.

China, as an emerging economy, has made continuous contributions to the global economic development over the past 30 years. However, it cannot be immune to the crisis. The problems existing in the economic development in the past pose great challenges to China such as the impact of worsening economic crisis, slowdown of international economy and shrinking demand for traditionally competitive products in the international market. So we decide to give serious consideration to these problems at this very moment.

There is a traditional saying in China that on the one hand, crisis means risks and on the other hand, it means opportunities. There are lots of risks, such as shrinking demand and overcapacity, etc., but we can still find more opportunities for China's economic development in many aspects. As a matter of fact, the sluggish world economic development offers many opportunities for China. As a responsible entrepreneur, I'd like to say that China's economic development is undoutedly a success and I think everyone present would agree. However, there still exist a number of problems, which can be summarized into two points in terms of energy and environmental protection:

To a large extent, the pace of economic development is based on high energy consumption. We can see that China's energy consumption is three times that of the world for every 1000-U.S.-dollar GDP; our greenhouse gas emissions double the average level. Therefore it poses a big challenge, that is whether such a development model is sustainable, and what we should do to improve it?

We think that Sichuan Province represents a sustainable development model in a sense. As the No. 1 province in hydropower with an economically exploitable capability of 103 GW accounting for 25% of the total in China, Sichuan Province can play a significant role in energy and environmental protection. Besides, we can see a large number of hydropower stations in Sichuan, of which nearly 50 have the capacity of more than 250 megawatts. and more than 60% of the capacity is used for electricity generation. The sustainable development model of geothermal power generation by Alcoa in Iceland bears some analogy to that of hydropower generation in Sichuan. The key lies in efficiency. Many people may ask: your model has indeed played a role in sustainable development and environmental protection in the long run, but is it acceptable in the short run?

As we all know, business is business. As entrepreneurs, you should always give top priority to corporate profits. But we can see that even if we increase equipment, reduce energy consumption and emissions, we can still make a staggering profit of 15,000,000 U.S. dollars every year, because the emission reduction itself cuts the costs by 15,000,000 U.S. dollars. This shows that energy-saving and emission reduction are not contradictory, but rather complementary in promoting the development of cities and countries if combined effectively.

Finally, I would like to quote some words of the CEO: one person alone cannot save the situation; unity of effort is the heart of all successful enterprises. Today so many talented people gather here, which is a great starting point. Normally crisis means difficulties, challenges and risks, but it means opportunities, revolution and success for successful people. After 30 years of reform and opening up, China enjoys favorable objective and subjective factors for success. Let us seize this great opportunity to work together and achieve common success. Thank you very much!