It has been ten years since the global financial crisis broke out. While the world faces such challenges as nationalism, populism and backlash against globalization, scholars concurred at a recent forum that the building of a community of shared future that China proposed is a solution.

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It has been 10 years since the outbreak of the global financial crisis. While the world faces such new challenges as nationalism, populism and backlash against globalization, scholars concurred at a recent forum that China’s proposal of building a community of shared future offers a solution.

The International Conference on “Challenges to Globalization and Political Trends of Major Countries” was held in early January. It was hosted by the Institute of Political Science at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

After reviewing and discussing the causes, features and trends of major developments, changes and adjustments in the world, attending scholars agreed that globalization remains the theme of the times despite backlash against it in the past year.

Wu Zhicheng, a professor from the Zhou Enlai School of Government at Nankai University, offered a summary of reasons for the downturn in globalization.

Last year, some countries faced state governance crises and failures of public policy. A couple of major countries have stuck to parochial nationalism with weak awareness of international responsibility and disregard for human destiny. There is rising imbalance and inequality in global development, while the wealth gap is widening between developed and developing countries, as well as within them, Wu said.

National and regional risks became global, underscoring the urgency of effective global governance, and illegal immigration waves and terrorist attacks now and then have inspired growing dissatisfaction with globalization among the public of countries accepting immigrants and sheltering refugees, Wu said.

Moreover, liberal international order was in governance crisis, the traditional global governance system was caught in institutional trouble, and developed countries in the West were less active in providing international public goods and reforming the global governance system, Wu added.
In the current era, no country can cope with various challenges mankind faces alone or retreat to an isolated island. Xiaobo Hu, a professor from Clemson University in the United States, noted the important consensus that globalization is irreversible.

Wang Wen, executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, said that over the past decade since the breakout of the global financial crisis, the share of global merchandise trade in the GDP of countries around the world remained stable, while the growth of global service trade outpaced that of GDP.

At the same time, the United States consistently accounted for about 24 percent of the world’s GDP, while the share of major developed economies, such as Europe, Japan and Russia, dropped by approximately 8 percent, and that of China grew by 8 percent, from 7.3 to 15.3 percent.

Therefore, the voice against globalization in the West is not opposition to globalization so much as an attempt to shape a model more suited to their own interests, Wang said.

Globalization has not regressed. Instead, it has entered a new stage, said Yang Pingjin, editor-in-chief of Beijing Cultural Review. The backlash against globalization is the inevitable outcome of global adjustments and changes.

Globalization in the broad sense means a process in which civilizations from different regions get along or clash and blend into a world system, Yang said, adding that with the deep integration in information technology and traditional industries following the 2008 financial crisis, global industrialization has been further upgraded, showing signs of a new stage and new order of globalization.

As the world undergoes major developments, changes and adjustments, building a community of shared future has become a much-anticipated proposal from China. Through thousands of years of practice, Chinese philosophy features equality in difference and unity in diversity, providing a basis for the new round of globalization, attending scholars said.

Last February, the 55th Session of the UN Commission for Social Development unanimously passed the resolution on “Social Dimensions of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development,” which embraced the idea of building a community of shared future for mankind.

Xu Liping, a research fellow from the National Institute of International Strategy at CASS, said the community of shared future is a concept to cope with a variety of problems in the contemporary era. It was incorporated into UN resolutions because it aims to help address common challenges facing mankind, Xu added.

 

 

ZHANG JUNRONG is a correspondent at Chinese Social Sciences Today.

 

(edited by CHEN MIRONG)