Beijing’s growing clout seen and heard
Political, business and academic leaders braved bonechilling cold in Davos, Switzerland, to gather at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday morning and listen to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s keynote speech at the opening session.
Xi said that although economic globalization has come to be seen as a “Pandora’s box” by many, it is not the real source of problems.
Unlike senior Chinese officials participating in the meeting 10 or 20 years ago, whose speeches were often confined to outlining the domestic economic situation, Xi called for the world’s political and business leaders to join hands to achieve inclusive development, a stance that reflects the changing role of China from a participant to a leader in the global economic system.
That transformation is clearly reflected in the country’s increasing involvement in the Davos forum over the past three decades.
As a journalist covering the event, what has impressed me most is that there has been a large number of Chinese — officials, scholars, businessmen and journalists — entering the Congress Center. China has sent its largest delegation in history to the meeting this year, a sign of its commitment to further opening up and integrating into the global economy and of the world’s hope that China play a larger role in building a new global economic order. That includes leading a coordinated effort to steer the world economy through troubled waters.
The Davos forum, established in 1971, first asked China to participate in the event in the late 1970s, when it was just opening its economy to the outside world. On the invitation of Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the forum, China sent a small delegation led by an economist to Davos in 1979, marking an important step in China’s resumption of economic exchanges with the outside world.
Since then, the Chinese delegation to Davos has grown ever larger and the level of officials participating in the forum has been on the rise, reflecting China’s rising clout and its willingness to engage in “responsive” economic exchanges with other countries.