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

Source: Finance ThinkTank

On March 23, the China Development High-Level Forum 2026 Annual Conference was held in Beijing, with Professor Zhu Yunlai from Tsinghua University attending and delivering a speech.

Zhu Yunlai proposed that, compared to GDP and other output data, the capital flow data released by the National Bureau of Statistics also holds high research value. By deeply excavating comprehensive data such as capital flow tables, we can not only see common current flow indicators like consumption and investment, but also gain insights into total assets, total savings, and liabilities, thus obtaining a more complete analytical perspective.

“From an economic principle perspective, asset efficiency is always a key variable that we must pay close attention to.” Zhu Yunlai said: “The improvement of unit asset efficiency can significantly reduce input while keeping GDP output unchanged. The resources and benefits released by efficiency improvements can further be transformed into consumption power, stimulating domestic demand.”

Using new energy and wind power equipment manufacturing as an example, he explained, “It is fully feasible to effectively reduce investment costs and improve asset efficiency through technological advancements and improvements in management processes.”

“Creating higher income through efficiency improvements, and then using that higher income to support consumption growth, is the fundamental path to expanding consumption,” Zhu Yunlai concluded.

Subsequently, Zhu Yunlai compared the asset scales of China, the U.S., and Europe. Although both the GDP and total asset volume of the U.S. are growing, the growth rate of U.S. asset scale is significantly lower than that of China. In terms of fixed asset total value, China’s net fixed asset total value is about 400 trillion yuan, while the U.S. is about three-quarters of that, roughly 300 trillion yuan, and Europe is about half of the U.S. “The proportion of China’s asset scale in the world is higher than the proportion of China’s GDP output in the world,” Zhu Yunlai said.

From a historical perspective, Zhu Yunlai stated that nearly 200 years of explosive economic growth has created 90% of the wealth accumulation in the 2000-year history. “This vividly demonstrates the value and significance of efficiency for economic growth; prolonged and continuous input may not be the only important factor, and the grasping of critical opportunities and the management of chances are equally indispensable.”

Zhu Yunlai emphasized that only by comprehensively mastering more economic variables can we understand the economy more systematically and thoroughly, allowing finance to support the economy more systematically, accurately, and effectively.

(Edited by: Wenjing)

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