Championing Multilate In a World of Contradictions
At a time when humanity confronts various global challenges, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been leading a spirited defense of multilateralism and economic globalization. A Xinhua News Agency report highlights Xi’s role in searching for answers to the many problems plaguing the world. The following is an edited version of the report:
Global challenges from regional conflicts and terrorism to widening income gaps and climate change have nudged humanity to a crossroads: globalization or anti-globalization, multilateralism or unilateralism, integration or isolation.
While some are retreating to the easier option of unilateralism and isolationism, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been leading a spirited defense of multilateralism to make economic globalization more invigorated, inclusive and sustainable.
This commitment featured in Xi’s state visit to Greece and his trip to Brazil for the 11th BRICS Summit in mid-november, where he called for global efforts to uphold multilateralism and steer the world toward the vision of a community with a shared future for humanity.
“We are meeting at a time when crucial developments are taking place in the world economy and international landscape,” Xi told the BRICS summit, an emerging-market bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
While leaders of five of the biggest emerging economies met in Brasilia, trade tensions and policy uncertainties were taking a toll on the world economy, some politicians were ignoring the fact that the globe is warming up, Britain was still divorcing the EU and Syria was mired in an eight-year war.
It was not the first time for the Chinese president to sound the alarm on the crucial situation.
“What has gone wrong with the world?” Xi asked at the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos in January 2017, a big question the whole world was reflecting on.
The world has been going through profound changes unseen in a century, Xi said.
He expounded his observation at the Asia-pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting held in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in November 2018.
While economic globalization surges forward, global growth is shadowed by protectionism and unilateralism; a new revolution in science, technology and industry is in the making, but the old driving forces are yet to be replaced by new ones; the international landscape is undergoing profound
changes, but imbalance in development is yet to be addressed; and the reform of the global governance system is gathering momentum, but improving its efficiency remains a major challenge.
To highlight the ever critical situation faced by humanity, Xi has repeatedly used the analogy of a crossroads.
“Mankind has once again reached a crossroads,” he said.
Which direction to choose? Cooperation or confrontation? Openness or closing one’s door? Win-win progress or a zero-sum game?
Amid the myriads of changes one thing is certain: It is as impossible to reverse the trend of globalization as to channel the waters of the ocean back into isolated lakes and creeks. In today’s world no country could possibly stay aloof and develop alone.
At the APEC meeting in PNG, convened on board a cruiser anchored by Port Moresby, Xi said, “We are all indeed fellow passengers in the same boat.”
In the same boat
In order to help the world sail forward through wind and waves together, Xi has put forward the Belt and Road Initiative and the vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, two important components of what is known as Xiplomacy.
In a show of their growing global popularity, more than 160 countries and international organizations have signed Belt and Road cooperation documents with China, and Xi’s grand vision is being incorporated into more and more UN resolutions.
“I came up with the proposals of building a community with a shared future for humanity and the Belt and Road Initiative while pondering on how countries around the world can achieve joint consultation and shared benefits, harmony in diversity and cooperation for win-win results in the face of divergent interests and concerns,” Xi told UN Secretary General António Guterres on the sidelines of the G20 Summit held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in November 2018.
There is no better choice for countries than strengthening multilateral cooperation in the face of one global challenge after another, Xi said.
In this line of thought, Xi sees China’s development inseparable from that of the rest of the world. “China will do well only when the world does well,” he said.
Accordingly, experts have observed that China is pursuing an ever more engaging foreign policy, striving for a stable international environment to enable its development as well as recognizing its global responsibilities as it moves toward center stage.
“To pick one word to exemplify China’s foreign policy under President Xi, I would choose ‘engaged’ or ‘proactive’,” said Robert Kuhn, a leading U.S. expert on China.
China’s engaged diplomacy has been the hallmark of Xi’s governance, said Kuhn, who has been paying close attention to every foreign trip made by the Chinese president.
There is now an “inflection point” in China’s diplomacy, catalyzed by Xi’s championing of multilateralism, as the country changes from reactive to proactive in its international relations, said the expert, also
Chairman of the Kuhn Foundation.
In the eyes of former French Prime Minister Jean-pierre Raffarin, who has met Xi about a dozen times, the Chinese leader is full of passion.
Raffarin particularly referred to a meeting on global governance Xi attended during his visit to France in March along with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-claude Juncker.
At the meeting, Xi pledged to uphold multilateralism and pointed out that China and Europe are two major forces in the world, and are important participants in and builders of the economic globalization process.
That gathering, Raffarin said, was the first step toward building a new type of multilateralism in the 21st century.
As transformations are taking place in global governance, the more than sevendecade-old multilateral system needs fresh impetus, he said.
In terms of strength, Asia and Africa are now very different from what they were after World War II, and they should be properly represented in the multilateral system, added the French statesman.
Swiss army knife
Expounding on his vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity at the UN Office at Geneva, Switzerland, in early 2017, Xi recalled the first time he got a Swiss army knife.
He said he was amazed that it had so many functions and could not help thinking “how wonderful it would be if an exquisite Swiss army knife could be made for our world affairs. When there is a problem, we can use the knife to fix it.”
In the eyes of many, such a multifunctional kit for world cooperation is already unfolding.
Ahead of a trip to Beijing in April, Guterres
told the press that through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has created development opportunities.
There are more investments, trade and growth, which not only contribute to poverty reduction, employment and improvement of infrastructure in developing countries, but also promote environmental construction and social stability and development, said the UN chief.
The secret of the initiative’s success is partly that it is based upon China’s understanding of multilateralism.
The essence of multilateralism, Xi said at the BRICS Summit in Brasilia, is that international affairs should be addressed through extensive consultation rather than decided by one country or a few.
Upholding the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, Xi put forward the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, the same year he assumed office as president. The initiative has now become the most popular platform for international cooperation in the world.
“Dominance by a single party is not allowed in the Belt and Road Initiative,” Xi said on a tour of the Port of Piraeus, a flagship project of Belt and Road cooperation between China and Greece, during his visit there.
“Instead, all participants would share responsibilities and benefits in Belt and Road cooperation,” he said.
The Belt and Road Initiative offers grand principles to support its grand visions such as building a community with a shared future for humanity, Kuhn said, adding that it expands links between Asia, Africa and Europe and thus reduces imbalances in national development and promotes economic growth.
“There are different kinds of flowers with different colors in our gardens and we can make a beautiful garland by joining the flowers together,” said Nepali President Bidhya
Devi Bhandari in an interview with China’s Xinhua News Agency earlier this year. “The Belt and Road Initiative can make a beautiful garland.”
Raffarin, a frequent visitor to China since his first trip in 1970, observed that China’s diplomatic vision is deeply rooted in and inspired by its traditional culture, which believes that cooperation is better than confrontation.
The Belt and Road Initiative is a great initiative to promote global cooperation, he told Xinhua in September.
“In this world of interdependence, we must expand our thinking beyond all forms of nationalism to assume our common destiny. For all this, China will remain useful to the world,” he said.