Wharton business forum recognizes China's rise

With its financial influence on the rise, “China will probably be the largest economy in the world for the rest of this century,” stated Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Carlyle Group David Rubenstein.

He made this prediction in his keynote speech, “Why China is the Future of Private Equity” during the annual Wharton China Business Forum, held Saturday in Huntsman Hall.

The all-day forum featured presentations by notable speakers such as Rubenstein, President and CEO of Walmart China Ed Chan and Jose “Zito” Sartarelli, Johnson & Johnson Company Group chairman for Asia-Pacific, Japan and Latin America.

The forum was an opportunity for aspiring international business professionals to learn about China’s economic climate, talk to experts on China and network with others in their field.

In addition to the speeches, attendees participated in case study sessions, networking sessions and panels on topics such as China’s real estate bubble or challenges of industrialization.

“My career path is going to take me between the U.S. and China,” Jeffery Zou, a Wharton sophomore studying Finance, said when explaining his motivation attending the event.

The forum also drew many participants from outside of the Penn community: local businesspeople, students from other universities and two groups of students from Peking and Tsinghua University who flew in from China.

“If I went back to college I would really like to have this kind of interaction with professionals,” said Ping Chen, a Philadelphia businesswoman who also attended the forum last year.

“There are very well-known, high quality speakers here who bring a lot of insight,” she added.

While Saturday’s speakers shared lessons learned from years of doing business in China, as Warren Clark, a Deloitte partner and contributor to the Capital Markets panel said, “No one knows as much about China as they think they do.”

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