Annual Report 2023

ANNUAL REPORT 2023 27 The Group actively created a workplace environment with equality and respect, diversity and inclusiveness, and unleashing potential. While protecting the basic rights and interests of employees and optimizing the employee welfare system, the Group improved the talent training mechanism, and provided employees with multi-level and multi-form communication and appeal channels, including employee representative meetings, employee appeal mechanism, grass- roots research, etc., to actively listen to employees’ voices and respond to their needs and opinions in a timely manner. Relying on its public welfare system of “Shaping Blue Dreams Together (C-Blue)” with Global Philanthropic Mission, the Group continued to focus on talent training, value sharing, child care, environmental protection, education and medical care and livelihood assistance and so forth, and actively communicated with the communities and the public in the regions where it operated to identify the priority issues of community services, so as to further improve the systematic and comprehensive issues of community development and community investment, and assist the sustainable development of local communities. The Group continued to explore new paths for sustainable development of its projects, transforming C Blue Family Summer Camp and C Blue Children Growth Camp into a professional, high-level and systematic C Blue Rural Education Public Welfare project. The “China Merchants Silk Road Hope Village” project continued to advance deeply, and a series of infrastructures such as community activity centers, medical and health centers, crop cultivation bases, and poultry breeding bases were built for the villages where the project is located, benefiting more than 6,000 villagers. The Group further formulated skills cultivation plans to improve the self-restoration ability of local communities. The Group continued to implement a number of volunteer programs to drive and cultivate more employees to participate in volunteer services and adopted various means to strengthen community openness and exchanges and stimulate community vitality. FUTURE PROSPECTS Looking ahead to 2024, the global political and economic situation will become more complicated due to the uncertainties brought by macro systemic risks, coupled with more uncertainties brought by large-scale elections to be taken place around the world. The growth of the global economy remains at a slow recovery pace. If there are more “black swan” events such as the spillover and spread of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it may trigger another strong and unpredictable movement in inflation and commodities, which will disrupt the economic growth of countries. The global industrial chain and supply chain showed a fragmented and regionalized development trend. The international maritime industry was deeply affected by the reshaping of the global industrial chain and supply chain. The interruptions in global trade and freight movements will increase the uncertainties in maritime transport and supply chain. Although the continuous accumulation of risks in the global financial market has brought a series of risks and challenges to the development of the global economy, the recovery of the service industry and the declining core inflation will provide favorable support for economic growth in 2024. IMF expects the global economic growth of 3.1% in 2024, with developed economies, emerging and developing economies increasing by 1.5% and 4.1%, respectively. In 2024, in order for China to promote economic recovery, it is necessary for China to overcome certain difficulties and challenges, which mainly include insufficient effective demand, overcapacity in some industries, weak social expectations, and a number of hidden risks. Bottlenecks in the domestic circulation and rising complexity, severity and uncertainty of the external environment, have put pressure on the economic growth. However, relying on the production advantages of a mature and complete industrial chain supply chain and the advantages of a large-scale market, China’s imports and exports still maintain important positions in the international market. In coordination with the synergistic development of the digital economy and the green economy, it lays a good foundation for accelerating the construction of a modern industrial system. In the next stage, China will continue to speed up the construction of a new development pattern with the domestic circulation as the main body and the domestic-international dual circulation reinforcing each other. The open and huge Chinese market will continue to play a supporting role for the economy through imports and exports.