Interconnection generates synergies for world economy

How to further build an interconnected world economy has become a common task facing the international community when unilateralism and protectionism are seriously impacting the international economic order and markedly adding risks and uncertainties to the world economy. The G20 is a premium forum for international economic cooperation. It represents two thirds of the world’s population, about 90 percent to the world’s GDP and nearly 80 percent of the global trade volume. China claims  that G20 members, which are big in size, should shoulder greater responsibility for world economic growth and make a difference.

The 2016 Hangzhou summit is generally commended as the most fruitful summit in the history of G20, during which the G20 Leaders’ Communique and 28 specific outcome documents were issued and the “Hangzhou Consensus” aiming to promote the robust, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth of world economy was reached. One year later, the Hamburg summit, which stressed shaping an interconnected world, continued in the same vein with the Hangzhou summit.

In 2018, the Buenos Aires summit, under the theme of Building Consensus for Fair and Sustainable Development, prioritized development in global macro-policy coordination, showed support to the connectivity of infrastructure and helped developing countries realize sustainable development, which echoed the Hangzhou Consensus. Promoting interconnected development and global cooperation demonstrates China’s ambition of achieving win-win development and building a community with shared future for mankind. During the Hangzhou summit, the G20 Initiative on Supporting Industrialization in Africa and Least Developed Countries and the Global Infrastructure Connectivity Alliance Initiative were proposed to support industrialization with action plans and deepen cooperation in food security and inclusive business.

China holds that all sides should enhance policy coordination for sustainable development, establish a global partnership for interconnectivity, and develop high-quality infrastructure so as to drive the economy of all countries. These action plans and pragmatic results will relieve the issues of unfair and unbalanced global development, and bring tangible benefits to the people in developing countries. Besides, they will help realize the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and make contribution to the common prosperity of human beings. Interconnectivity plays a fundamental role in world economic development, said Piet Steel, Chairman of the EU-Asia Centre. The joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative is a vivid example of interconnected development and has been well-received by the international community, he added.

The second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation made a series of achievements regarding the cooperation between China and other countries along the route. During the Forum, a customs information exchanges and sharing platform was launched and member institutions under the Belt and Road Regular Inter-bank Cooperation Mechanism agreed to deepen financial cooperation. Such achievements have contributed to the international macroeconomic policy coordination and common prosperity. Oleg Timofeev, an associate professor of China studies at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, said that all countries are able to deal with the increasing challenges as long as they interconnect with each other. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s proposal of building an interconnected world economy will make the international order more just and equitable, he added.

(People’s Daily)