There have been many surprising events taking place in China over the past decade, and by 2030, China will become a country where everybody is richer, and where the digital economy is pervasive everywhere. This is what Mauro F. Guillen (Guillen), dean of the Cambridge Judge Business School and emeritus management professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, predicts China will look like in the next 10 years to come. After publishing the Chinese edition of his book, 2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything, Guillen shares his view with Global Times (GT) reporter Li Aixin on a glimpse of future and how the greatest changes in this era will affect the geopolitical landscape across the globe.

GT: After you wrote the book, the world has witnessed the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and a nose-diving China-US ties. In the final part of your book, you mentioned how COVID-19 will amplify and accelerate the changes in the world. Will the trends, which you analyzed in the book, be affected by other unexpected events?

Guillen: The pandemic has been very consequential in terms of changing everything. But when you think about the three basic trends that I discussed in the book - demographics, economy, and technology - I think the pandemic has been a major accelerator of those trends. They have increased in terms of magnitude.

For example, one key trend, the decline in the number of babies. As data shows, during 2020 and 2021, fewer babies were born because young couples, when confronted with all of the uncertainties about the pandemic, decided to postpone having babies.

Then the other really important issue is the transformation of the economy. Emerging markets have done better in terms of economic growth than other markets in the world, especially those in Asia. Therefore, the gap between developed markets and the emerging markets has become smaller, which was already going on before the pandemic.

And then the best example is technology adoption. Before the pandemic, very few of us were using digital platforms, such as the ones that we're using now. But now we do this every day for many hours. I spend hours and hours on Zoom every day. The rate of technological change, especially technological adoption, has actually accelerated as a result of the pandemic.

My only regret is that instead of giving the book the title "2030," I should have called it "2028," because the future that I describe in the 2030 now is arriving much faster.

 Guillen: For young people in China, I would have three very clear messages. 

The first one is try and learn about all of these trends, because you need to have a sense as to what's going on in the world. 

The second thing, they have to prepare themselves, but they have to be optimistic. They have to look for the opportunities that are hidden behind all of these events. 

The third thing is that we are in an uncertain world. There's no question about it. Every few months we have another crisis. We have another moment in which we feel that everything is changing. Whenever that happens, what I would strongly suggest to them, which is what I proposed in the book in the last chapter, is that you should never make decisions that are irreversible. You should preserve as many degrees of freedom as possible. So in other words, make decisions that you can later adjust, that you can later change, as you see how the situation evolves. 

I would like to share in general, this sense of optimism. We have big problems in the world, but we also have big opportunities. And therefore, what I think we need to do is to study those opportunities very carefully and to pursue them. There are opportunities in every part of the world, more importantly, there are key advantages from collaboration and cooperation among countries in the world.