Zhang Dawei: China’s New Concept of Global Economic Governance: Mutual Consultation, Joint Building and Outcome Sharing

Zhang Dawei, Vice Chairman of CCIEE

In the report delivered by president Xi Jinping at the national congress of the 19th Communist Party of China (CPC), he emphasized that China should focus on the building of the belt and road, follow the principles of mutual consultation, joint building and outcome sharing, and participate actively in the reform and building of the global governance system. Recently, the 71st UN General Assembly has passed the resolution in relation to “the United Nations and Global Economic Governance”, and for the first time the concept of mutual consultation, joint building and outcome sharing have been incorporated into the UN resolution, demonstrating the great achievement of China’s diplomacy.

The transformation of the global governance system is inseparable from the guidance of sophisticated ideas. President Xi Jinping pointed out that we have to bring innovation to the global governance and promote the concept of mutual consultation, joint building and outcome sharing when he chaired the 27th group-learning session of the politburo of the 18th CPC Central Committee. Later on, he reiterated and elaborated the significance of these concepts during several occasions. The fact that these concepts have been incorporated into the UN resolution for the very first time indicates that the international community has reached a high level of consensus in this regard with China. Chinese think tanks have the responsibility to interpret and promote these concepts appropriately.

The principles of mutual consultation, joint building and outcome sharing are developed from China’s development practices and the trend of economic globalization. Furthermore, these principles can be considered as a response to the request of the countries and people who support economic globalization, and reflect the current characteristics, goals and the paths of implementation, and more details can be described as follows.

First of all, these principles and ideology embody the spirit of the time. The principles of mutual consultation, joint building and sharing are proposed in the face of unprecedented challenges in economic globalization and are based on China’s judgment on the current international economic pattern. At the press conference of this year’s BRICS Leaders Meeting, held in Xiamen, president Xi stressed that we should promote an open, inclusive, universally beneficial, balanced and win-win economic globalization, and accelerate the reform on global economic governance. In response to the problems caused by the imbalanced economic globalization, we should make the global governance regulations more democratic. Furthermore, we should encourage different types of economies to take part in bringing innovation to the rules and system of global governance, especially the developing countries which have a massive economic size. We should make sure that the global governance will become fairer, more reasonable and effective. Lastly, we should respond to the challenges with coordination, replace confrontation with dialogues, resolve differences through cooperation so as to jointly foster prosperity, safety and peace of our world.

Secondly, with comrade Xi as its core, the CPC Central Committee has raised the proposal of building a community of shared future for mankind, clarified the value–orientation and goals of China in pushing forward economic globalization and advocating a new concept of global economic governance. All the proposals and clarifications are made by the central committee during the process of improving the well-being of the Chinese people and making the Chinese economic development healthy and sustainable. The destiny and future of mankind have always been an eternal topic of the Marxism. Having considered the challenges and problems facing our world today, such as poverty, diseases, war, natural disaster, terrorism, climate change, environmental pollution and the widening rich-poor gap, the growing China must connect its dream with the destiny of all the people around the world in order to make the proposal of building a community of shared future for mankind a common goal of promoting global prosperity. The proposal raised by president Xi is not just a significant contribution to the scientific socialism, but also reflects the spirit of the Chinese civilization, caring about the entire world.  

Last but not least, conducting cooperation through mutual consultation, building a platform for cooperation jointly and sharing the benefits of cooperation are vital for implementing the new concept of global governance. In the report of the 19th CPC Central Committee’s National Congress, comrade Xi emphasized that China remains to be the world’s largest developing country and has a long learning process in the areas of war and peace, prosperity and development, trade and investment, finance, technology, information, innovation, consumption and global supply chain. Therefore, we should make the best use of different channels and platforms and work together with other countries to thrive the sluggish economy, and design economic adjustment policy with the goal of realizing a win-win outcome. In terms of jointly building a platform for cooperation, China should take corresponding responsibility, and actively discuss with other nations on improving the current management and standard when engaging with the platforms such as the United Nations, IMF, WTO, BRICS, G-20 group, APEC countries, Shanghai cooperation organization and ASEAN countries. Eventually, we should establish a fair and reasonable new international order with joint effort.

At the same time, China should also focus on building the connectivity in the regions along the belt and road, build a platform for investment and financing with the international community, and provide assistance to poor countries with outdated infrastructure. In terms of sharing benefits, on one hand, China welcomes other countries to seize the opportunities resulted from China’s economic transformation. On the other hand, China aims to enrich the global and regional cooperation by building the belt and road, establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund. In the face of the new technological revolution, all the countries should figure out how they can seize the opportunities, share the innovation in technology, development mode and industrial capacity cooperation.

In the report of the 19th CPC Central Committee’s National Congress, comrade Xi Jinping made the building of a community of share future for mankind one of the basic strategies for developing the socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era. We should see that China still needs to improve its ability to participate in global governance, the government departments and think tanks need to grasp the understanding of the report, work together to express China’s voice, contribute China’s wisdom and offer a Chinese-solution.