China Development Forum (CDF)’s “Voices” Section invites Forum’s delegates to share their experiences and feelings over the past year with the companies they lead, their industries and countries under the title "My 2020".

Selected to share “His 2020”, today's CDF voice is Zhang Bo, chairman of China Hongqiao Group.

At the beginning of his speech, Zhang Bo recalled what an extraordinary year 2020 and how everyone did an amazing job getting through the pandemic.

He recalls how the COVID-19 outbreak caught all of us unprepared. Especially when considering that Hongqiao is a factory with over 100,000 employees. When counting in their family members, that number goes up to 300,000. All it would take is one infected person to expose the lives of all our employees and their families to danger. Also, our production operations would be greatly affected. But one trait shared by all Hongqiao members is not to be afraid of difficulties. We always stand up against the obstacles bravely to solve them.

Hongqiao took immediate action by donating money to Wuhan and Binzhou. Another challenge we faced was the lack of masks. It was a desperate feeling to know that our medical staff in the ICU were not yet well-protected. So, we immediately resorted to our offices abroad to purchase the urgently needed medical supplies and fly them to China. Thanks to a very rapid response, we were able to supply our front line medical stuff and protect our citizens.

And, when the epidemic began to spread abroad, we responded equally fast by purchasing from domestic institutions and shipping them to the international community. We are glad to have been able to help Italy, Germany, Spain and Indonesia, making donations based on local situations.

A Much Prosperous Future

Now, with the pandemic behind us, we can concentrate in developing clean and green energy, which is the main direction of Hongqiao.

We started amid the pandemic in 2020 by building a green aluminum industry chain in Yunnan with a sustainable industrial park that covers over 3,600 mu with a capacity of over six million tons.

By transferring more than two million tons to Yunnan in the first phase, one-third of our capacity is now powered by hydroelectric power. After we started our Yunnan project. What makes us even happier is that by transferring our plant to Yunnan, we are helping alleviate poverty by providing thousands of migrant workers with a proper job and improved working conditions. Through our training program, we are helping underprivileged workers  become skilled industrial workers. We are also bringing our seniors and children programs for them to guarantee that their dependent family members are taken good care of.

Our goal is to get the industry, forestry, and agriculture to co-exist and develop harmoniously.

This is for us the best way to pursue green development. Our factory is an environmentally friendly plant, surrounded by green trees. We are also teaching local farmers to grow potatoes and other economic crops.

For us, the fact that we can alleviate poverty through industrial development while adjusting our energy structure by shifting capacity is our motivation to keep focusing on our future development.

This year marks the Year of Ox in the Chinese lunar calendar. The Ox is an animal characterized by the untiring spirit of cultivation and hard work. With the spirit of the Ox, we will never cease to propel innovative development, green development and high-quality development, thus produce more and better products for people in China and all over the world.