President’s address at G20 Summit hailed as boost to global cooperation

Global experts have spoken highly of President Xi Jinping’s speech at the 17th Group of 20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, saying it would help build stronger global consensus and advance global cooperation.

Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the United Nations, referred to Xi’s statement at the summit and said the president called on all countries to replace division with unity, confrontation with cooperation and exclusion with inclusiveness. Xi said all countries should join hands to tide over difficulties and create a better future together.

“At the just-concluded G20 Summit, President Xi Jinping stood at the height of the future and destiny of mankind, upholding the history and a global perspective, and put forward a series of important proposals, which have important guiding significance for coping with current global challenges,” he said on Wednesday at a UN Security Council briefing.

Dennis Munene, executive director of the China-Africa Center at the Africa Policy Institute, said Xi was categorical in calling for the global community to join hands together and engage in win-win cooperation.

Xi reiterated China’s offer of global public goods such as the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative as twin architecture of development in the post-COVID-19 economic recovery strategy, Munene said.

Focused on offering more global public goods, China, together with other countries, is advocating the establishment of the Global Clean Energy Cooperation Partnership and the International Cooperation Initiative on Global Food Security at the summit, he said.

“These initiatives need to be embraced and implemented by the global community,” he added.

“Indeed, knowing the value of solidarity and common development, President Xi and China have ... taken the mantle of being the guardian of globalization and multilateralism.”

Kayode Ogunbunmi, a Nigerian observer, said Xi’s advocating for all nations to join hands to make global development fairer and beneficial to all is a welcome call at a time when global diplomacy seems missing on some key challenges facing the international community.

He welcomed Xi’s call for the inclusion of the African Union in the G20. Developing nations would also welcome Xi’s advice that the transition toward green and lowcarbon energy should proceed in a way that does not hurt the global economy or people’s livelihoods, said Ogunbunmi.

In addition, Xi’s promise that China will stay committed to the path of peaceful development, deepening reform and opening-up, as well as promoting national rejuvenation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization is reassuring, Ogunbunmi said.

One of the weakest points of global governance is the realization of its inadequate purpose which currently feeds into geopolitical uncertainty, said Christopher Bovis, a professor of international business law at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom.

President Xi reflected on the global governance deficit by providing evidence on food and energy security as avenues of recovery and hope for economic sustainability, coupled with comprehensive commitments for the protection of the environment through international instruments of plurilateral standards, said Bovis.

Xi also reiterated that close cooperation is required to achieve the benefits of resetting global governance in a manner that protects the environment and promotes sustainable development, Bovis added.