Commentary
BEIJING – President Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s commitments to multilateralism at a high-level meeting on Monday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations (UN), pledging to promote a community with a shared future for mankind.
Since Xi proposed “building a community with a shared future for mankind” almost seven years ago, he has been reiterating this flagship vision as China’s solution to collectively address global challenges.
This vision embodies the ideas of building an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity. It answers the major question of how the international community should face a period of turbulence and change that is characterized by increased fragmentation in response to salient risks and challenges.
Xi’s notion, as stressed on various occasions, including at the UN General Assembly, the National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and meetings with foreign leaders, has gained widespread international recognition. Now the concept bears greater significance and relevance at the UN’s high-level meeting, as leaders of countries, large and small, rich and poor, are expected to jointly forge solutions on issues including global public health, full equality and climate action, among others.
Some are playing the blame game
The world is witnessing the rise of protectionism, unilateralism and bullying practices, with the COVID-19 pandemic compounding the challenges. Certain countries and political forces keep playing the blame game, clamoring for “decoupling,” and pulling out of international organizations and agreements. What they are doing is sabotaging international cooperation, stoking confrontation between ideologies and social systems, and putting the world in serious jeopardy.
Yet, peace and development are still the prevailing trend of the day. Through cooperation and mutual benefit, countries are increasingly becoming a community with shared interests, shared responsibilities and a shared future.
Building a global community of health
The COVID-19 pandemic, the largest global public health challenge in the history of the UN, has reminded us in the most powerful way that we are closely interconnected. Sharing fears and hopes for the future, the humanity must show solidarity to build a global community of health for all, as Xi has proposed, to overcome the pandemic and make the world prosper again.
Win-win cooperation is the only choice for the world if it wishes to advance. As Xi said in his address to the UN meeting on Monday, no country has the right to dominate global affairs, control the destiny of others, or keep advantages in development all to itself. Even less should any country be allowed to do whatever it likes and be the hegemon, bully or boss of the world.
Incorporating Chinese wisdom
Incorporating Chinese wisdom, the concept of “building a community with a shared future for mankind” serves as a global public good in response to a global deficit of governance, trust, peace and development.
It emphasizes respecting each other, discussing issues as equals, resolutely rejecting the Cold War mentality and power politics, and taking a new approach to developing state-to-state relations with communication, not confrontation, and with partnerships, not alliances.
It advocates settling disputes through dialogue and resolving differences through discussion, coordinating responses to traditional and non-traditional threats, and opposing terrorism in all its forms.
It calls for sticking together through thick and thin, promoting trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and making economic globalization more open, inclusive, and balanced so that its benefits are shared by all.
Respecting diversity of civilizations
It stresses respecting the diversity of civilizations and replacing estrangement with exchange, clashes with mutual learning, and superiority with coexistence in handling relations among civilizations.
It highlights the importance of being friendly to the environment, cooperating to tackle climate change, and protecting the planet for the sake of human survival.
In line with such notions, China has not only talked the talk, but also walked the walk to put them into practice.
As a founding member of the UN and the first country to sign on the UN Charter, China actively looks for peaceful settlement of major regional disputes, such as the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, the Iranian nuclear issue, and conflicts in Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Middle East, and Syria, and has dispatched more than 40,000 peacekeepers to over 30 missions, contributing more peacekeepers than any other permanent member of the UN Security Council.
As a member to nearly all universal inter-governmental organizations and a signatory to over 500 international conventions, China has faithfully honored its commitments. In the face of COVID-19, China has actively responded to the UN-initiated Global Humanitarian Response Plan: a cash donation of US$50 million to the World Health Organization (WHO), assistance in kind to over 150 countries and international organizations, and medical exports to more than 200 countries and regions.
China has made an important contribution to the conclusion of the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement and its implementation guidelines. The country’s climate target for 2020 has been met ahead of schedule, representing a significant contribution to the global response to climate change.
The notion behind these actions is key to understanding China’s major-country diplomacy and grasping the opportunities of China’s development in the future.
Rejecting hegemony
China takes pride and has full confidence in its own development path, but also respects the development paths of other countries and has no interest in ideological confrontation or exporting its social system to others. It has no ambition to seek hegemony. China wants to rewrite, if anything, the obsolete model of a country seeking hegemony as it grows stronger, and is firmly committed to finding a new path of peaceful development and win-win cooperation with other countries.
The dream of the Chinese people is closely connected with the dreams of the peoples of other countries. China’s development cannot be separated from that of the world, and it will promote world peace and safeguard a stable international order through its own development.
The Chinese government has ensured that the basic needs of its 1.4 billion people are met, and all of its rural residents living below the current poverty line will be lifted out of poverty this year, a great contribution to world human-rights protection. It also seeks greater synergy between the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a solution to enhance connectivity, and the UN’s 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.
‘Dual circulation’ development
China is fostering a new development pattern known as “dual circulation,” which takes the domestic market as the mainstay while allowing domestic and foreign markets to boost each other. The stability of the world’s largest market also brings certainty and development opportunities to other markets which are in dire need to offset the headwinds of global economic recession.
Seventy-five years ago, world leaders took visionary steps to establish the UN, the most representative and authoritative international organization, to recover from a calamitous global war. The UN’s 75th anniversary comes as a reminder that a community with a shared future lies in the collective hands of humanity and challenges can only be addressed through reinvigorated multilateralism.
China will firmly defend the central role of the UN in international affairs, work with countries around the world to uphold multilateralism, and join the UN on a new journey with renewed commitments to peace, development and justice to shape a better future shared by all. – Xinhua
– Minor edits and subheadings by The Macau Post Daily
President Xi Jinping addresses a high-level virtual meeting to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations via video link from Beijing on Monday. – Xinhua
