G20 urges more united efforts to beat virus
Senior officials and analysts overseas agreed that the G20 Extraordinary Leaders’ Summit on COVID-19 held via a teleconference on Thursday has sent a message of solidarity and coordination among member states in confronting the pandemic and stabilizing the global economy.
Vice-Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu said that all sides voiced a commitment to enhancing cooperation in jointly tackling the crisis.
The agreement made by G20 leaders to share information in a timely manner, guarantee medical supplies and provide assistance to developing countries, especially the least developed nations, has rallied global efforts to fight the pandemic, Ma said.
The overarching theme of the statement released after the summit showed that there is a keen awareness among leaders that, “We’re in this together. We need to get out of this together as well,” said Wang
Xiaolong, head of the Department for International Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A spirit of solidarity is what the world looks forward to from the G20 as a major platform for crisis management and economic cooperation on global governance, Wang said.
Cambridge Worldwide Associates Chairman Alan Barrell said President Xi Jinping’s speech at the summit was inspiring — concise and succinct — and voiced a call for collective action at a time of great stress and peril for people worldwide.
As in all his recent speeches, Xi proposed knowledge sharing, transparency and a global mindset as the best way forward for the world and its citizens, Barrell said.
Making the point that “Major infectious diseases are the enemy of all”, the Chinese top leader offered four creative and positive proposals to his fellow G20 leaders, he added.
Barrell said Xi concluded his speech with remarks which have been heard from him repeatedly in his continuous campaign to encourage the removal of barriers and the elimination of tariffs to enable the unfettered flow of trade.
A G20 resolve to agree to such a collective approach — reflected in a real G20 plan to be drawn up without delay — would make the prospect of possible rapid recovery from a world crisis more likely, he added.
Stephen Perry, chairman of Britain’s 48 Group Club, said Xi has given practical meaning to his philosophy of a community of shared future by proposing four practical ways G20 nations can cooperate.
It is China’s huge experience in managing natural disasters over 70 years that enables him to draw on that practical experience to provide such a list, he said.
The G20 summit as a whole sent the message that cooperation, rather than confrontation, is crucial to global well-being and progress, Tom Fowdy, a British political and international relations analyst, wrote in an article.
The summit as a whole affirms that countries must stand together while they are physically forced apart by the social distancing of the virus, Fowdy wrote, adding that transparency, coordination, research and aid must ultimately stand at the forefront of the agenda. “This is the challenge of our time, it is the human race against a common threat, we must not fail,” he added.