Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is launching a new global conference to rival the World Economic Forum’s annual gatherings in Davos and the G20, the South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday.
The forum, which is being hosted by the Bloomberg Media Group in partnership with the government-backed China Center for International Economic Exchanges, will hold its inaugural session this November in Beijing.
Underscoring how much of a counterpoint the event will be to President Donald Trump’s approach to Beijing is that many high-profile participants have been critical of his hard-line policies toward China.
These include former US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (an honorary chairman of the forum) and Bloomberg himself, as well as former top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who resigned due to disagreements with Trump over his plan to put punitive trade tariffs on imports from China.
Bloomberg told the Financial Times that his conference will be "focused on the world and China as an emerging power and how we all work together," contrasting that with Davos, which "has been around for a long time [since 1974]. It’s a very big conference and it’s focused on lots of world problems.
Bloomberg added that many businessmen are worried by the short-term nature of US policymaking, saying Chinese projects go "around the world with timeframes in decades and unfortunately at the moment America’s timeframe is the next temporary budget resolution."
The former New York mayor said the forum would keep the guest list to 400 people, in contrast to the some 3,000 who attend Davos, explaining that "It’s not a party thing where you go and have dinner with everybody and hobnob with movie stars. This is a serious thing where we hope to get everybody to contribute."
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