China Development Forum

Alex Gorsky, CEO of Johnson & Johnson, said he hoped to work with U.S. and Chinese government officials to find the right path forward.

"The new rule of success is to co-develop in China," says Laurent Guyot of Thales China. "It's to generate technology from China together with Chinese partners."

There is much China can do to let its people enjoy the fruits of growth and technological development, said Takehiko Nakao, president of the Asian Development Bank.

Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan said the drugmaker would maintain its timeline for the decision of an Alcon spin-off.

Ulrich Spiesshofer, CEO of Zurich-based ABB, said both China and the United States are crucial markets for the company.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Christopher Pissarides said the U.S. failed to take care of its people who lost out during the past decades of open trade.

"Valuations are extremely high, higher than you can actually justify based on fundamentals," Allianz CEO Oliver Bate told CNBC.

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen said he had reservations about whether North Korea would actually get rid of all its nuclear weapons.

A ramp up in U.S.-China trade tensions would immediately result in an economic crisis, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller.

The issue is fundamentally tied to savings in the U.S., the economist told CNBC at the annual China Development Forum.

It was "fair" that Facebook took time to look into the allegations surrounding British consultancy Cambridge Analytica given how complex the issue is, said Martin Sorrell, CEO and founder of advertising group WPP.

China presents a major opportunity for global insurers as the rapidly growing economy opens up amid low insurance penetration rates, said Manulife's president and CEO.

Tariffs could see U.S. interest rates rise at a faster-than-expected clip, according to Societe Generale Chairman Lorenzo Bini Smaghi.

Summers said the Trump steel tariffs are positioned to hurt more workers within the U.S. than they could help.

The challenges posed by China's state capitalist system are legitimate and real, said former U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.

"Blunt force instruments" like tariffs won't go as far with China as talks that bring in Europe or Japan, said Douglas Peterson.

World-renowned economists and executives addressed rising trade tensions between the U.S. and China, discussing the possible impacts of a trade war from the annual China Development Forum.

Washington's proposed tariffs on Chinese products could be delayed, said Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who has been called the president's "China whisperer."