Paddy Cosgrave, CEO of the annual technology conference Web Summit, stated emphatically on Al Jazeera’s On The Record that China will dominate the tech world in the next decade.

According to Cosgrave, the West has lost its status as a leader in technology and innovation after holding this position for half a century.

The Irish co-founder of the Global Tech event did not fail to criticise the US and Europe, saying that “it’s hard for them when companies from other parts of the world are ahead of them”.

“For 50 years advances within technology were driven by the United States, but over the past decade, there has been rapid dispersion of technological capability to other parts of the world,” he said.

“In the coming decade, China will dominate technology because it has focused intensively on the important partnership between the public and private sectors with stunning results”, he continued.

According to him, the Middle East will be the region that will bring the “biggest growth” in the technology sector, whose emerging companies will be represented at the event.

“When Web Summit started, it attracted an overwhelmingly European and North American audience, but the changes over the past five years have been stark with the rise of participation from the Arab world,” Cosgrave said.

Cosgrave was adamant that the event would help introduce the rest of the world to the country and the Arab world.