When China speaks, everyone listens at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and Beijing's pitch can be summed up in three words - innovate or die.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang along with dozens of China's business elites, top state officials and celebrated academicians drew unprecedented interest at the forum.

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Li's keynote speech at the yearly gathering zeroed in on the global economy's development and he talked about measures to carry out wide-ranging reforms in China's vast economy. The Chinese premier compared innovation and mass entrepreneurship to a "gold mine" that could be a stable source of wealth and creativity.

He said that of China's one and one-third billion citizens, 900-million of them are in the workforce, which serve more than 70 million self-employed businesses and enterprises. He told the gathering in Davos that if the government could manage to harness every society "cell", China's economy would be invigorated and powered for growth.

Li said China's new growth engines are innovation and mass entrepreneurship, which can be achieved by mobilizing the power and wisdom of people.

The chairman of China's Huawei Technologies Ren Zhengfei supports the premier's vision. He seeks a path to growth far away from the old model of churning out low quality products at a low price. He warned that China would lose its strategic competitiveness in two decades if innovation was not a priority.

China's tech titan has taken "future-oriented" investments to stay competitive. Its most recent annual report showed around 40 billion yuan (US$6.44 billion) has been marked for research and development last year alone, up 28 percent year-on-year. Huawei's total R&D cost in the last ten years is about 188 billion yuan (US$30.3 billion).

 Another best example of a big Chinese company pursuing innovation is Alibaba. The chairman of Alibaba Group Holdings Jack Ma said it would be an honor for his company to help people in rural areas become wealthier and to expand the agricultural sector through Internet technologies.

TagsDavos, WEF, World Economic Forum, Jack Ma, Huawei, Li Keqiang