Did World Economic Forum Founder Klaus Schwab say that "humanity needs to be 'forced into a collaboration' with globalist entities"? No, that's not true: Even the recordings of Schwab's speech shared by accounts posting this claim on the internet did not support this interpretation. Speaking in China on June 25, 2025, he used the verb "foster" while talking about collaboration "across sectors, regions, nations and cultures", not mentioning "globalist entities" at all.
The story appeared in a post (archived here) on X where it was published on July 7, 2024. It opened:
World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab told delegates at a conference in China that humanity needs to be "forced into a collaboration" with globalist entities.
This is what it looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Jul 8 13:40:28 2024 UTC)
The post included a video showing a specific date: June 25, 2024, which was consistent with the dates of the 15th Annual Meeting of the New Champions (archived here) that took place in Dalian, China (archived here), between June 25 and June 2027, 2024.
One of the speakers at this event was Klaus Schwab (archived here), the founder of the World Economic Forum.
However, he did not say the words attributed to him by the post on X.
As seen in both the clip on X around the 00:42 mark and the video of the session on the website of the World Economic Forum at the 2:54 mark, Schwab, speaking with an accent, said "foster collaboration," not "force," and this becomes even more evident if one slows down the playback speed in both recordings:
To drive future economic growth we must embrace innovation and foster collaboration across sectors, regions, nations and cultures to create a more peaceful, inclusive, sustainable and resilient future.
Schwab continued:
At this critical juncture, the active participation of all stakeholders is essential to ensure a sustainable development path.
As the above quote demonstrates, Schwab did not refer to any "globalist entities." His wording in these specific sentences and the larger context of his speech was inclusive not only of international organizations but also emphasized the role of local ones.
A transcript of the panel available on YouTube showed the word in question as "forer", most likely due to Schwab's accent: That version of the transcript was automatically generated, and, as a result, it was not as accurate as a transcript produced or checked by a human.
Contrary to the claim, the subtitles seen in the World Economic Forum recording clearly show the word "foster":
(Source: World Economic Forum screenshot taken on Mon Jul 18 15:36:22 2024 UTC)
Showing signs of a coordinated campaign, the claim that is a focus of this fact check started to spread across multiple accounts and platforms, including a thread of the QAnon conspiracy supporters on 8kun, only in early July 2024, almost two weeks after the event.
No credible news organizations (archived here) indexed by Google News reported anything similar between the date of the speech and this writing.
What could have been the most confusing part to the audiences seeing posts promoting the claim was that many of them incorporated the verb "force" written in all-caps letters into the incorrect subtitles. Even when such clips are played with sound, seeing a specific word on the screen has the potential to change (archived here) how people hear the actual audio due to the way the human brain functions to make sense of the world. This video (archived here), for example, explains some mechanisms of how visually invoked auditory responses come into being.
Both Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum have been a long-term target of various conspiratory narratives not grounded in facts.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about the World Economic Forum can be found here.
Stories about international topics are here.
