The China Development Forum 2026 annual meeting was held in Beijing from March 22 to 23, focusing on the theme "China in the 15th Five-Year Plan Period: High-Quality Development and Jointly Creating New Opportunities." The Chairman of Agricultural Bank Of China Limited, Gu Shu, attended the forum and delivered a speech.

In his address, Gu Shu shared three key insights regarding finance's role in supporting green and low-carbon development. First, he emphasized that green development should always form the foundation of rural revitalization. He stated that ABC adheres to the core principle that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," integrating ecological protection and resource conservation throughout the entire rural development process to avoid the pattern of "pollute first, treat later" and achieve sustainable rural revitalization. "Our service outlets cover all of China's more than 2,800 county-level administrative regions, making us the only bank with comprehensive coverage across all counties," he said, noting that this extensive network provides a solid channel foundation for the widespread promotion of green finance.

Second, Gu Shu highlighted innovation as a crucial means to gather momentum for green development. He explained that ABC persists in innovation-driven development, continuously enhancing its own green service innovations. By improving the group's collaborative innovation system and optimizing policies, mechanisms, and business processes, the bank steadily elevates the professional standards of its green financial services. "For example, the recent open-source AI agent OpenClaw has sparked excitement in the tech community. We promptly launched ABC's version, 'ABC-Claw,' which helps account managers automatically process green project data, cross-verify multi-dimensional information, and intelligently generate due diligence reports, making the loan process more convenient, efficient, and secure."

Third, he identified cooperation and linkage as an effective pathway to advance green development. Gu Shu noted that green development involves broad aspects and requires cross-sector collaboration to build synergy. In recent years, ABC has actively strengthened coordination and linkage with governments, financial peers, and various sectors of society to deepen cooperation in green development.

Regarding jointly creating a global future for green development, Gu Shu put forward three proposals. He suggested fully leveraging international exchange platforms like the China Development Forum to strengthen policy dialogue and mutual learning of experiences, build consensus, enhance mutual trust, and promote higher-quality green development through more practical cooperation.

Firstly, he proposed enhancing the coordination and alignment of green standards. He recommended further leveraging the leading role of international organizations to promote dialogue and coordination within the international community on aspects such as green project identification, environmental benefit measurement, and information disclosure requirements. This would improve the comparability and compatibility of green standards across countries, laying a solid foundation for the interconnectivity of global green markets.

Secondly, he advocated for increasing efforts in green financial innovation. Gu Shu suggested that global Financial Institutions focus on the demands of the green transition and further strengthen financial innovation empowered by digital technologies. Specifically, he emphasized fully utilizing artificial intelligence and other technologies to enhance capabilities in green project identification, carbon footprint accounting, and precise risk management, continuously expanding service channels and boundaries, and improving service quality and efficiency to better meet the financing needs of the global green transition.

Thirdly, he called for facilitating the cross-border flow of green capital. Gu Shu recommended strengthening the connectivity of green investment and financing platforms, improving risk prevention and information sharing mechanisms, and enhancing the convenience and security of cross-border green capital flows. In particular, he suggested supporting the green transition in developing countries through methods such as co-financing, knowledge sharing, and capacity building.