Cooperation still the only way to overcome global challenges

As President Xi Jinping indicated in his video address at the Global Trade and Investment Promotion Summit last week, the stronger the headwinds are, the more the world needs to pull together. Greater cooperation and coordination are required to bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, reinvigorate trade and investment, unleash the power of innovation in driving development and improve global governance.

Xi called on countries to embrace a global governance vision featuring extensive consultations, joint contributions and shared benefits, and to choose dialogue over confrontation, to tear down walls rather than erect them, pursue integration instead of decoupling, opt for inclusiveness, not exclusion, and adopt the principles of fairness and justice as guides for the reform of the global governance system.

Themed “History at a turning point: government policies and business strategies”, the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2022 from Sunday to Thursday in Davos, Switzerland, offers those attending the event a chance to act on the pertinence of his call for concerted action.

This is the first time the WEF has hosted an in-person annual meeting in more than two years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the opportunity for face-to-face consensus-building discussions should not be squandered by allowing the internal frictions in a divided system to further complicate the difficulties the world faces.

Although collaboration and coordination remain imperative, they are now happening increasingly in two parallel systems — that of a US-led club and a non-US one.

The challenges are grave and multiplying. As well as the pandemic and its effects, climate change and biodiversity loss are existential threats that can no longer be ignored, the global economic recovery is obviously unstable, uncertain and unbalanced, and debt risks are building up. And those are only a handful of what is a veritable smörgåsbord of troubles for attendees at the forum to chew on.

As the world’s second-largest economy, the largest trade partner of about 120 countries and regions, the largest manufacturing base and major investor and foreign investment destination, China is doing its best to maintain the stability of the global supply chains and strengthen cooperation between the developed and emerging market economies, and providing necessary assistances to the less developed countries at such a trying moment.

China hopes that all countries will realize that they are in the same boat, and in this period of volatility and transformation will realize it is imperative to join hands and uphold peace, development, cooperation and win-win partnership.

Exclusive blocs mean division and confrontation at a time when resources from across the world need to be mobilized to meet the pressing global challenges.

Exclusive blocs mean fiddling while Rome burns.