On February 19th-23th, as Chairman of the Sustainable Development Working Group of APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) 2017, Mr. Frank Ning, Chairman of Sinochem Group, attended the First Meeting of ABAC 2017 in Bangkok, Thailand.
At the opening ceremony, Mr. Frank Ning touched upon the topic of regional integration. He pointed out that some countries were against trade liberalization and globalization to protect their domestic employment and industry. In fact, the factors that resulted in employment decline and industry reform were comprehensive and manifold. These factors also included technical progress and industry innovation among others. Therefore, all countries should deeply study factors that impacted employment and industry development and measure them comprehensively rather than simply credited them to trade liberalization and globalization.
Mr. Frank Ning chaired the meeting of the ABAC Sustainable Development Working Group and submitted two proposals: Sustainable Development of the Oil & Gas Industry amid the Medium to Low Levels of Oil Prices Environment and the Improvement of Power Batteries in Electric Vehicles.
In the first proposal, Mr. Frank Ning pointed that long time low and medium priced oil would generate significant impact over the oil and gas industry as well as relevant industries. At the same time, they would also pose challenges to the macro economy of many countries. The proposal suggested that the sustainable development of oil and gas industry should be stressed. Oil and gas companies of the APEC countries should work hand in hand with the government and conquer the negative impact of medium and low oil price.
In the second proposal, Mr. Frank Ning indicated that with constant breakthrough in technology and the increasing environmental pressure, electric vehicles were gaining vigorous promotion and extensive use worldwide. Power battery as the core part of electric vehicles (EV), technical renovation would effectively break the bottleneck of EV development whereas EV upgrading would require chemical engineering to provide targeted solution, e.g. to develop more efficient positive and negative materials and safer diaphragm materials among others.
During the meeting, Mr. Frank Ning also Chaired Senior Officials’Meeting attended by ABAC representatives and APEC senior officials. Fourteen ABAC representatives conducted deep discussions over topics such as Post-Bogor Goals, regional economic integration, Asia-Pacific free trade zone with APEC officials from seven countries including China, Japan, New Zealand and Russia.