At its twentieth anniversary global annual meeting, Zhou Xiaochuan, Co-Chair of the International Finance Forum (IFF) and Vice-Chair of the Twelfth China Political Consultative Conference, stated that, currently, the growth in international trade and investment, influenced by a multiplicity of risks, such as unilateralism, geopolitics, military conflicts, inflation, international debt and industrial chain restructuring, had slowed significantly, the global economic recovery had been slow and uneven and uncertainty had increased further. The latest report issued by the IMF in October indicated that the global economic growth rate was expected to slow from 3.5 per cent in 2022 to 3.0 per cent in 2023 and 2.9 per cent in 2024, well below the average of 3.8 per cent between 2000 and 2019.