Zhu Yunlai: Supporting Financial Innovation for High-Quality Development (Full Speech)

Source: Finance ThinkTank

On March 23, the 2026 annual meeting of the China Development Forum will be held in Beijing. Zhu Yunlai, a professor of management practice at Tsinghua University, attended the conference and delivered a speech.

Zhu Yunlai proposed that, compared with output-value data such as GDP, the capital flow data released by the National Bureau of Statistics also has more research value. By deeply mining comprehensive data such as the capital flow statement, we can not only see familiar current-flow indicators such as consumption and investment, but also gain insight into the stock and liability situations, such as total assets and total savings, thereby obtaining a more complete analytical perspective.

“From an economic principles standpoint, asset efficiency is always a key variable that we must pay close attention to.” Zhu Yunlai said: “An improvement in unit asset efficiency can significantly reduce input while keeping GDP output unchanged. The resources and returns released by efficiency gains can be further converted into consumption momentum and help boost domestic demand.”

Zhu Yunlai used the examples of new energy and wind power equipment manufacturing to show that “through technological progress and improvements to management processes, it is feasible to effectively lower investment costs and enhance asset efficiency.”

“Create higher income through efficiency gains, and then support consumption growth with higher income—this is the fundamental path to expanding consumption.” Zhu Yunlai concluded.

Subsequently, Zhu Yunlai compared the asset scale of China, the United States, and Europe. Although the United States’ GDP and total assets are both growing, the growth rate of the U.S. asset scale is significantly lower than ours. Judging from the net total value of fixed assets, China’s net fixed asset total is about 400 trillion yuan, the United States is about 3/4 of China, or around 300 trillion yuan, and Europe is about half of the United States. “Our share of global asset scale is higher than our share of global GDP output value,” Zhu Yunlai said.

From a historical perspective, Zhu Yunlai said that the rapid, explosive growth of the human economy over nearly 200 years has created 90% of the wealth accumulation in the 2,000-year history. “This actually vividly demonstrates the value and significance of efficiency for economic growth; long, sustained investment may not be the only factor that matters. At crucial moments, seizing the opportunities and riding the chances is equally indispensable.”

Zhu Yunlai emphasized that only by comprehensively grasping more economic variables can we understand the economy in a more systematic and thorough way, and only then can finance’s support for the economy be more systematic, more precise, and more effective.

(Editor: Wenjing)

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