Ahead of the International Business Leaders’ Advisory Council (IBLAC) meeting to be held tomorrow, some members “exercised up" with a taste of local sports on Saturday afternoon, including playing table tennis against robots.

About 30 members of the IBLAC, all chiefs of multinational companies, came to Shanghai University of Sport. After a show by students performing dancing, martial arts and fancy rope skipping, the executives rolled up their sleeves to play ping pong.

Some of the players were robots, and there were also some young athletes.

Severin Schwan, CEO of Roche Group, said it was interesting to play with robots, but after playing with a local teenager, Schwan said “it still takes a long time for robots to learn the skills of real ping pong.”

They also visited the Chinese Wushu Museum.

Every year, IBLAC members are invited to participate to get involved in local culture.

Tomorrow morning, they will have their annual meeting with the Shanghai mayor under the theme “Enhancing the Capacity and Core Competitiveness of Shanghai.”

The IBLAC was initiated in 1989 for Shanghai to seek counsel from the biggest and most important companies in the world for Shanghai's development.