BRI for Global Development

As the world today is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, economic globalization is going through rapid adjustments and transformation. Deep-seated conflicts and challenges in global development are unfolding. As global development is standing at a crossroad, China proposed the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and underlined jointly advancing the high-quality development of the Belt and Road. This demonstrates China’s role as a responsible major country and China’s important practice to vigorously engage in and lead global development and governance and build a community with a shared future for mankind.

Global Development Deficit and Governance Crisis

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world economic growth has remained lackluster, the gap between the rich and the poor and the North and the South has widened and protectionism and unilateralism have been on the rise, thus bringing about more destabilizing and uncertain factors in world economic and social development and adding new deficits in global development. The main reasons are as follows: The first is generally inadequate global development. On the one hand, the majority of developed countries, as the “main driving force” of global development, have been suffering from the impact of the COVID-19, and their growth has slowed down or even ground to a halt, failing to contribute sufficiently to global growth. On the other hand, the majority of developing countries, except China and a few others, have been long suffering from sluggish growth and some even have been in a long-term downturn, and some even face economic recession. The second is an unbalanced development space that fails to widely share the development outcomes to the benefit of all. We see unbalanced development prevailing in the world with a yawning gap among regions and countries. The third is insufficient momentum for sustainable global development. The traditional development model has resulted in extensive and inefficient economic growth and the rising “knowledge hegemony” in recent years has been born on the investment in innovation and R&D, leading to stagnant global innovation and development. The world economic growth has decelerated to the slowest pace since the financial crisis. The fourth is the imperfect international development assistance system. The global development assistance spearheaded by the western countries is so ineffective that some countries even “become poorer with more assistance”. The fifth is the dissatisfactory global development environment. With the surging anti-globalization and populism as well as deteriorating global development environment, we have witnessed frequent economic warfare and tech warfare between countries and between countries and regional blocs. Certain countries even put domestic laws above international rules, which gravely undermines the international economic and trade order and causes serious harm to global development.

The deficit in global development is the result of the interplay of multiple factors. Globalization, while boosting global growth for the benefit of mankind, also negatively leads to development divide, inequitable distribution and ecological damage. When these negative effects are amplified against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic spreading across the world and sluggish economic growth, the perverse anti-globalization and the narrow nationalism are resurging, imposing extremely adverse impact on global development.

Such deficit in development, to some extent, poses challenges to state governance within countries and therefore accumulates to a global governance crisis. On the one hand, some developed countries have seen escalated social conflicts and tensions due to long-term economic downturns, but only with inadaptable governance systems, they fail to implement governance policies suitable for social development. Therefore, the consensus on globalization is broken and social consensus over global development and national cohesion is dampened. On the other hand, the western development model, when being replicated worldwide, is seriously inadaptable to local conditions. The model has failed to boost the modernization drive of the host countries and also resulted in economic stagnation and political turmoil in many developing countries. Moreover, such domestic problems as extreme poverty and terrorism in these developing countries have ridden the wave of globalization only to spill over to the rest of the world, further triggering the global governance crisis.

Embracing a New Prospect

In the face of struggling global economic recovery and insufficient momentum for sustainable global development, the international community is eagerly looking forward to the Chinese solution. With profound vision and strategic insight, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the GDI that stays committed to development as a priority, a people-centered approach, benefits for all, innovation-driven development, harmony between man and nature and results-oriented actions. Through the GDI, we strive to steer global development toward a new stage of balanced, coordinated and inclusive growth and pursue more robust, greener and more balanced global development. This GDI is a global public good offered by China and an important illustration of the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind. It has drawn up a grand blueprint for international peaceful development, cooperative development and common development, pointed the way forward for advancing sustainable global development and building a better world, and fully demonstrated the global vision, broad horizon and concerns for humanity of President Xi Jinping as the leader of a responsible major country.