#Switzerland #China Economy #UnionPay #Davos #Davos 2026

UnionPay at Davos 2026: Showcasing China's Economic Resilience

UnionPay, the prominent payment services provider, was honored to be invited to the esteemed Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), commonly referred to as Winter Davos, held in Switzerland on January 21, 2026. The event brought together global leaders, policymakers, and business executives under the theme of fostering durable economic growth in a challenging international landscape.

During the event, UnionPay's President, Dong Junfeng, participated in a significant panel discussion titled "Is the Chinese Economy in Full Emergency?" Here, he engaged with fellow panelists to explore pivotal topics such as China's economic development trends, innovation-driven growth, and the nation’s contributions to the global economic framework. The dialogue underscored the formidable resilience and promising growth potential of the Chinese economy, highlighting UnionPay's role in supporting national economic initiatives and promoting global economic cooperation.

In the face of rising global economic risks and challenges, China's economy has remained resilient. In 2025, the nation’s GDP experienced a year-on-year growth of 5%, surpassing 140 trillion yuan overall. Dong emphasized that China’s long-term stability and sustainable growth stem from various positive factors, including long-term government development planning, effective policy guidance, boosted market vibrancy, modernized consumption, and rising domestic demand. These two latter factors are essential to China’s economic landscape.

Politically, the country continues to promote a new development paradigm where domestic and international circulation reinforce each other. The 15th Five-Year Plan specifically calls for initiatives to enhance consumption and expand the supply of high-quality consumer goods and services, serving as a cornerstone for ongoing economic expansion.

Emerging Consumer Trends

As new consumer trends and business models quickly evolve, data from UnionPay indicates a steady rise in digital payments within China's consumption sector. Innovative business models such as live-stream e-commerce, cross-border e-commerce, instant retailing, and collaborative economy initiatives are gaining importance. Notably, spending on winter sports and tourism has surged over 50%, while cross-border payments have consistently increased, demonstrating over a 60% growth in overseas spending. These trends indicate a shift in domestic consumption from traditional goods toward high-quality, diversified, and intelligent use cases.

The structural changes in consumer spending are reshaping the drivers of economic growth, as consumption increasingly entails both goods and services rather than merely goods. This transition has catalyzed a shift towards lighter, personalized production and accelerated product supply innovation.

In line with market trends, UnionPay is leveraging its strengths in the payment sector to enhance the consumption market’s volume and quality through technological innovation and service improvement. The company is developing a payment network that encompasses both online and physical store use cases, optimizing payment experiences, and reducing transaction costs, which in turn effectively stimulates spending potential and drives business dynamism. Thus, UnionPay is establishing itself as a crucial accelerator for China’s ongoing economic growth.

Harnessing AI for Economic Growth

UnionPay is also actively pursuing the construction of an AI-driven ecosystem, with emergent fields such as artificial intelligence (AI) becoming vital contributors to productivity increases and sustained economic growth. Dong noted that the recent worldwide surge in AI marked significant advancements in large language models, multimodal technologies, and intelligent agents, thereby accelerating widespread adoption.

AI enhances efficiency, optimizes business models, and transforms ecosystems, driving new quality productive forces. It acts as a disruptive engine for economic growth, with the payments sector leading its application. By improving efficiencies, AI helps reduce costs and enhances productivity in personal tasks, corporate operations, industrial collaboration, and decision-making.

UnionPay has developed an intelligent risk control system in payment security, where AI-assisted risk control rules serve as a robust safeguard for the safe and compliant development of digital payments. Furthermore, UnionPay has launched the "Nihao China" app for international visitors, providing comprehensive services through intelligent agents based on natural language interaction to meet personalized payment needs.

In transforming operational models, AI is shifting industries from passive instruction execution to proactive response to needs, leading to new business models. As global payment companies delve into agency payment, UnionPay takes the lead with the launch of the MCP Agentic Payment Service. This service not only integrates traditional payment capabilities but also features an innovative agent-driven payment experience, allowing users to complete the payment process seamlessly through conversational interactions.

Strengthening Global Cooperation

In a world characterized by heightened uncertainty in trade policies and geopolitical frictions, China is committed to promoting high-level openings and presenting opportunities to the global community through its development. Payments, serving as the “capillaries” of cross-border trade, investment, and interpersonal exchanges, are crucial for fostering closer international cooperation.

Dong underscored that China's sustained economic growth not only benefits the country but also helps forge stronger partnerships across global markets. By nurturing a development model based on equitable cooperation and mutual benefits, China shares the rewards of stable development and economic growth with the world.

As of now, China ranks among the top three trading partners for over 150 countries and regions, creating vast export opportunities and development perspectives for emergent markets through massive flows of goods and services. This dynamic contributes to local employment, industrial modernization, and infrastructure improvement, enhancing self-sustaining development capacities.

UnionPay actively implements an international development strategy that combines globalization with integration, continually enhancing its global payment network. To achieve this, nearly 300 million UnionPay cards have been issued in 83 countries and regions outside of mainland China, with acceptance networks spanning 183 countries, including over 75 million international merchants. These achievements establish a robust global payment network that ensures stable, frictionless transactions for investment, trade, and personal exchanges between China and the world.

Looking ahead, UnionPay aims to serve the international market while emphasizing high-quality development within the payment industry. By intensifying technological innovation and accelerating the integration of new technologies such as AI with payment services, UnionPay is poised to enhance the quality and efficiency of its contributions to the real economy, promoting interconnected and standardized growth in the global payment market.