(Yicai) March 19 -- Seventy-two percent of chief executive officers from Chinese mainland companies surveyed by UK accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said they are optimistic about their business growth prospects in the next three years.

Despite macroeconomic challenges that may impact short-term operations and expectations, 72 percent of Chinese mainland CEOs remain confident about their business growth prospects over the next three years, according to the 28th Annual Global CEO Survey China Report released yesterday. The figure is much higher than the global average of 53 percent.

"This confidence stems from multiple factors: the fundamental long-term resilience of both the Chinese and global economies, the effective incentives of China's macroeconomic policies, and the advancement of Chinese enterprises' global layout," said Josene Zhou, PwC China public affairs leader.

Zhou expects the Chinese market to remain attractive as innovative-driven deployment and technological breakthroughs continue to empower industries and the package of incremental policies deployed last September continues to be implemented and takes effect, addressing short-term challenges while considering long-term planning.

In line with their global counterparts, Chinese CEOs expressed concerns about macroeconomic volatility and inflation. However, they were more confident in growth prospects despite heightened sensitivity to geopolitical tensions and supply chain disruptions, according to the report.

In terms of investment for the next 12 months, the United States remained the top offshore destination for 46 percent of Chinese mainland CEOs, followed by Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia, and Germany. For global CEOs, the top four overseas investment destinations were the US, the UK, Germany, and the Chinese mainland.

Chinese mainland CEOs are increasingly optimistic about their companies' long-term viability, the report showed. Forty-four percent of them believe their firms will last less than a decade if they continue their trajectory this year, a significant drop from 75 percent last year.

"Over the past two years, driven by new quality productive forces, China has demonstrated a commercial evolution path distinct from those of the traditional industrialized nations, marked by improvements in production factors, transformations in business models, and the intelligent reshaping of industrial chains," PwC China Markets Leader Geoffrey Wang said.

"This has opened fresh opportunities for global business investment and development in China, highlighting the new advantages of the Chinese market during a period of global economic transition," Wang added.

"This echoes with their heightened confidence in the Chinese business environment over the medium to long term, as the country pivots towards high-quality development marked by new quality productive forces leading to stellar performances in strategic sectors like electric vehicles, artificial intelligence modeling, and robot and advanced manufacturing," according to the report.

Strong commitment to accelerated reinvention efforts also emerged from the report. The vast majority of CEOs in both the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong implemented at least one major initiative in the past five years, investing in generative AI, addressing the opportunities and threats posed by climate change, and reinventing their operations and business models to create value in new ways.

As AI adoption continues to gain more and more global traction, 49 percent of Chinese mainland CEOs express a high degree of trust in integrating AI into their core processes, compared to 33 percent globally.

"This trust is crucial for unlocking the full potential of AI technologies and driving innovation within organizations," the report noted, adding that it is also partly a result of Chinese companies making breakthroughs in localizing GenAI over the past year.

"China's leading technology firms are increasingly adopting the 'technology middle platform' strategy, which significantly reduces barriers to the adoption and deployment of new technologies," said Wilson Chow, PwC China AI leader.

Editor: Futura Costaglione