From Autocrats To Automation: Key Quotes In Davos

Davos: "Lenin is dead." That quote in Davos summed up a planetary shift playing out this week as US President-elect Donald Trump prepared to take office and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared himself the true guardian of globalisation.

Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt was commenting on the irony of hearing President Xi Jinping promote free trade and open markets in Davos, a century after Vladimir Lenin was busy plotting world revolution down the road in Zurich.

Here AFP rounds up other noteworthy declarations heard at the World Economic Forum this week:

"No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war." - The Chinese president delivers a veiled warning to the protectionist Mr Trump in a keynote address that was met with adulation from many in the Davos crowd. The speech included references to Chinese folklore, Charles Dickens and Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

"The United Kingdom...will step up to a new leadership role as the strongest and most forceful advocate for business, free markets and free trade anywhere in the world." - British Prime Minister Theresa May denies Brexit means British withdrawal from the world stage, in a speech that was met with rather more reserve from the Davos audience than Xi's before.

"I was struck by people wanting to hug Xi for talking about globalisation, free trade and so on, whereas when May talked about those things, she was greeted with incredulity because we're walking away from the EU." - Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London and one of Britain's leading strategic thinkers, noting that the Davos elite remains in shocked disbelief at the Brexit vote.

"We want to have a phenomenal relationship with the Chinese. But if the Chinese really believe in globalism, and they really believe in the words of Lincoln, they have to reach now towards us and allow us to create this symmetry, because the path to globalism in the world is through the American worker and the American middle class." - Hedge-fund investor Anthony Scaramucci, the sole member of Trump's transition team who made it to Davos.

"I'm glad I'm out of office." - Former Estonian president Thomas Hendrik Ilves, capturing the fear of all the uncertainty brought on by the populist backlash that has powered Trump's rise and Brexit.

"Make our world great again." - Message seen emblazoned on a Trump-style red cap sponsored by "Caspian Week", a PR event for Swiss oil trader Integral Petroleum, which operates in the Caspian Sea.

"Equality is on everyone's lips here in Davos, and maybe actually equality is becoming the new black." - Swedish Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson reflecting on a key theme of this year's Davos, as the World Economic Forum tries to get to grips with the anti-elite revolt.

"We face the prospect of leaving a larger part of humanity behind than in any other (industrial) advance." - Infosys chief executive Vishal Sikka warns that governments are ill-prepared as machine intelligence risks making much white-collar work obsolete.

"The world is so wonderful. Why should I be the CEO of Alibaba all the time? I don't want to die in my office. I want to die on the beaches." - Chinese internet pioneer Jack Ma, goading the Davos audience of highly paid workaholics.

"I feel like an advert for North Face." - Amnesty International chief Sahil Shetty on doing endless outdoor TV interviews in distinctly un-beachlike temperatures of -15 degrees Celsius (five degrees Fahrenheit).