Dear Stephen Andonovski, Minister of Digital Transformation,

Dear Nina Angelovska Stankov, President of Macedonian E-Commerce Association,

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning!

It is a great pleasure to join entrepreneurs, experts, scholars and industry representatives from many countries today in Skopje to explore the future of e‑commerce and artificial intelligence.

The theme of this conference is “From Wait to Go.” We live in the era of digital transformation. From a single smartphone to the global market, from one click to cross‑border cooperation, digital technology is making what once seemed far away now within reach. China goes for new quality productive forces, embracing e‑commerce with open arms. E‑commerce has become a driving engine of high‑quality growth, unleashing tremendous vitality. In 2025, China’s e‑commerce transaction volume reached 6.25 trillion euros, with cross‑border e‑commerce hitting 380 billion euros. During the “Double 11”  shopping festival— Chinese Black Friday, online sales totaled 230 billion euros, with 14.2% increase over the previous year. What does China hope to achieve in building a “Digital China” to empower Chinese modernization?

First and formost, put people first. Invest not only in infrastructure but more importantly, in people. China has nearly 1.2 billion internet users, and over 900 million users of online government services. Express delivery now covers more than 95% of all incorporated villages, making e‑commerce accessible to the most remote regions. E‑commerce has also become an important platform for rural revitalization: more and more farmers sell rice, tea, fruit and other specialty products across the country through livestreaming. In 2025, top e‑commerce platforms hosted over 4 million agriculture‑supporting livestreams, shipped more than 20 million orders of farm products per day. China’s online retail sales of agricultural products reached 100 billion euros, rising 9.9% year on year. Digitalization makes transactions not just more “convenient,” but public services more accessible, and people’s lives happier.

Second, stay open and open‑source to make digital development more dynamic. Chinese open‑source models keep providing practical solutions for industrial innovation worldwide. By August this year, China’s AI open‑source community AtomGit had gathered over 80,000 models and 370,000 datasets. In 2025, Chinese open‑source models accounted for over 17% of global downloads, helping international companies such as Airbnb, DoorDash, Coinbase and Thomson Reuters optimize their business models. Today, U.S. companies continue to generate over 30% of weekly token traffic to Chinese AI models, reaching as high as 46%. Just this past weekend, Alibaba and Apple announced a partnership to integrate Qwen into Apple Intelligence.

Third, promote win‑win cooperation. AI should not erect new “digital walls,” but build more bridges for dialogue. China is accelerating “AI + e‑commerce,” proposed the Global AI Governance Initiative, pushed the UN General Assembly to adopt by consensus a resolution on international cooperation in AI capacity‑building, issued the AI Capacity‑Building Action Plan for All and the “AI+” International Cooperation Initiative, hosted the 9th World Artificial Intelligence Conference, and promoted the establishment of a World AI Cooperation Organization—creating new platforms for technological exchange, industrial cooperation and governance dialogue among countries.

China and the EU are each other’s second‑largest trading partners, with bilateral trade exceeding 730 billion euros and two‑way investment stock above 250 billion euros. Goods trade with China has supported about 3 million jobs for EU countries. In the digital age, China–EU common interests are not fewer but more, and the space for cooperation is not smaller but larger. China and the EU have established mechanisms such as the High‑Level Digital Dialogue and held talks on exchanges of cross‑border data flows. It serves mutual interest to strengthen cooperation in AI, e‑commerce, ICT, big data and cloud computing. Between 2015 and 2025, joint China-EU research output in artificial intelligence has surged more than sixfold. In quantum technology and semiconductors, this output nearly doubled over the same period. The Government of North Macedonia has adopted the SMART/MK 2030 strategy and is accelerating digital transformation. I strongly echo Minister Andonovski in saying that digitalization should not be an end in itself, but a tool to raise economic competitiveness and build a better country. We stand ready to work with European countries, including North Macedonia, to uphold a people‑centered and "technology for good" approach , so that people over the world can benefit from e‑commerce and AI becomes a key source of momentum for shared prosperity and common security.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This year marks the start of China’s 15th Five‑Year Plan. China will keep expanding high‑level opening up: from going global to buying global, China has been the world’s second‑largest import market for 17 years running. Last year, goods imports reached 2.47 trillion euros, and 2.29 trillion euros in the first three quarters of this year, 6 percentage points faster than exports. The day after tomorrow, the 9th China International Import Expo will open in Shanghai. We welcome Balkan businesses to take an active part, explore markets and opportunities, and look forward to seeing more quality Macedonian wines and signature products enter the Chinese market through cross‑border e‑commerce. We will help local enterprises connect with Chinese e‑commerce platforms, strengthen exchanges between business associations, and turn more cooperation projects from online links into offline results.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Digitalization transformation cannot be realized without capacity building. China is a committed advocate of the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, readily sharing its development experience and advanced technologies with all partners. Not long ago, at the opening of the 2026 World AI Conference and High‑Level Meeting on Global AI Governance, President Xi Jinping announced that over the next five years China will provide 5,000 special AI training places for other countries. This year, over 200 Macedonian citizens, public servants, professors, doctors, entrepreneurs, students have attended training programmes in China, among which nearly 10% are related to e‑commerce. Next year we will continue to support more Macedonian SMEs in raising their digital capacity. I'm sure that with our concerted efforts, North Macedonia will not only go for digitalization, but will go even faster.

Last but not the least, a big applause for Nina and the E‑Commerce Association of North Macedonia for the excellent organization and thoughtful arrangements. I look forward to the insights of the experts and entrepreneurs here. 

Thank you all!