Experts welcome president’s position against protectionism

President Xi Jinping’s call for a liberal global trade system and opposition to protectionism at the BRICS Business Forum held in Johannesburg on Wednesday won praise from experts in the United States.

“The international community has reached a new crossroads, and we are facing a choice between cooperation and confrontation, between opening-up and a closeddoor policy, and between mutual benefit and a beggarthy-neighbor approach,” Xi said at the forum where around 1,000 delegates from BRICS member countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — participated.

“President Xi is right that the world is facing a choice between opening-up and a closed-door policy,” David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former economic and financial emissary to China with the US Treasury, told China Daily on Wednesday.

“As the BRICS increase their share of the world economy, it is more and more important that they take the lead in new rounds of trade and investment liberalization,” Dollar said. “At the same time, some developed countries are taking the protectionist road, which will harm themselves and the rest of the world.”

“The best hope for the world economy is that the rich countries resist protectionism and the large emerging markets open up further to trade and direct investment,” Dollar added.

Xi said in his speech that “A trade war should not be waged, because no one will benefit from that”, and economic hegemony should be resisted as it harms the common interests of the international community.

Jon Taylor, of the University of St. Thomas in Houston, said on Wednesday, “Xi’s speech touched upon themes that he has emphasized for the past several years, and which have become all the more important as the US has abandoned its traditional role in support of economic globalization in favor of harmful tariffs and protectionism.”

Taylor, a professor of political science, added, “Xi did a skillful job in linking China’s call to BRICS members”, as senior Chinese officials attended a gathering of G20 finance ministers and central bankers in Buenos Aires last week to discuss ways to combat global trade protectionism.

Taylor said Xi’s speech provided a laudable admonition to US President Donald Trump’s anti-globalization agenda.

“There were several other points in Xi’s speech that were notable: Xi directly linked the Belt and Road Initiative with the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by noting that the initiative may have started in China, but belongs to the world,” Taylor wrote in a reply to China Daily. “This served as a stark contrast to Trump’s unilateralism.”

“He also noted that BRICS-Africa cooperation should serve as a model for South-South cooperation,” Taylor said. “This was underscored by his observation that the next decade will be a crucial one in which new global growth drivers will take the place of old ones.”