Exploring Shanghai with the Draghi Report

A view from Line 10

This post explores the Draghi report with a view from Shanghai Metro Line 10. What can Europe learn from the way in which urgent need for change has transformed an industrial site from oil refinery to hydrogen production over the last seventy-five years? And what might the view reveal about relative advantages that Europe maintains and can build on?

I started this post with the aim of exploring the Draghi report while staying in Shanghai. One thought led to another: intention to explore the report developed into new perspectives of the area in north-east Shanghai where I stay when I’m here. Energy connects us all.

In October when I was last here in Shanghai, the Draghi report on European Competitiveness had recently been published. I had planned to read it and form my own views beyond pre-digested commentary. I didn’t get around to it then, but the intention has followed me ever since.

The diagnosis is scathing and the medicine is strong. The report released by Mario Draghi in Brussels on 9 September, ‘The future of European competitiveness’, warns the European Union that it faces lasting sluggish economic growth – which could end up threatening Europeans’ prosperity and social welfare.

Draghi’s report highlights three ways ‘to reignite growth’: Closing the innovation gap with the US and China in key technologies; seizing opportunities from the ongoing global decarbonization process; and securing supply chains from geopolitical dependencies, that risk turning into vulnerabilities. Link

The report was in the news again recently through coverage of the Davos World Economic Forum. And then, talking to friends in Shanghai, I was reminded of the report again.

If Europe cannot become more productive, you will be forced to choose. You will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. You will not be able to finance your social model. You will have to scale back some, if not all, of your ambitions. You face an existential challenge.

That could be a quote from one of those conversations in Shanghai rather than a slightly modified passage from Draghi’s report. Inevitably, conversations in Shanghai reach a point of incredulity: