World needs more globalisation, not less
China will advance the building of a Free Trade Area in the Asia-Pacific and negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership to form a global network of
free trade arrangements
Globalization arrives at a crossroad with a series of black swan events in Western countries in 2016.
Though economic globalization is a double-edged sword, blaming economic globalization for all the worlds troubles is shortsighted.
As Chinese President Xi Jinpingsaid Tuesday while addressing the 2017 World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, Switzerland, We should adapt to and guide economic globalization, cushion its negative impact, and deliver its benefits to all countries and all nations.
Over past years, cross-border trade and investment sustained a slump, trade barriers were built higher, regional integration was hindered and immigration policies were tightened in many countries.
Populism, isolationism and protectionism are on rise in the Western world. The United States - once a top promoter of economic globalization - has adopted an inward-looking posture and will be led by a new president who has made anti-globalization remarks. The European Union has been badly hit by the Brexitand throws its own globalization experiment into doubt.
Xi said, Some people blame economic globalization for the chaos in the world. Economic globalization was once viewed as the treasure cave discovered by Ali Baba in The Arabian Nights, but now it has become the Pandoras Box in the eyes of many.
The fact is that when the global economy is facing downward pressure, it is hard to make the cake of the global economy bigger.
Analyzing the root causes of the sluggish global economy and the problems for which globalization has been made the scapegoat, Xi pointed to a lack of robust driving forces for global growth, inadequate global economic governance, and uneven global development.
Meanwhile, anti-globalization and populism in the West are related to politics that are wrapped up in economic problems and resulting in growing social fragmentation.
As Xi put it, Whether you like it or not, the global economy is the big ocean from which you cannot escape. Any attempt to cut off the flow of capital, technology, products, industries and people between economies, and channel the waters in the ocean back into isolated lakes and creeks is simply not possible.
Therefore, the right way forward is to guide economic globalization, cushion its negative impacts, and deliver its benefits to all countries.
Taking Chinas accession to the World Trade Organization as an example, despite bewilderment and fear from foreign countries, China took a brave step forward to embrace the global market.
We have had our fair share of choking in the water and encountering whirlpools and choppy waves, but we have learned how to swim in this process. It has proven to be the right strategic choice, Xi said.
Opening up brings the world to China and China to the world. Such active integration has had global ramifications.
In 2016, China was responsible for 33.2 percent of the worlds economic expansion, remaining the top engine of global growth in 2016, up from a mere 0.53 percent in 2001.
All in all, an anti-globalization cry only reflects a shortage of globalization itself.
History taught us that a parrot repeat of those bearish chorus over economic globalization cannot remove the roadblocks, but increase the difficulty to solve the problems. From a historical point of view, only a precise grasp of pulse of economic globalization will lead the world economy out of woods, it stressed.
But it indicated at the same time that integrating into economic globalization does not suggest that the voices against it should always exist during the process.
What are the reasons for the ceaseless doubts against economic globalization and the outburst of anti-globalization tide especially in the Western world? In a word, it is a natural outcome of the double-edged character of globalization, it noted.
The interwoven economic, political, domestic and international challenges have increased the uncertainties of future economic globalization. In order to turn the anti-globalization tide around, a top priority of the world is to address the problems in economic growth, governance as well as development models.
There is a fundamental need to develop a dynamic innovation-driven growth model, one that is well-coordinated and inter-connected, one that is win-win for all involved, Xi said.
China aims to tackle the problems of inequality, exclusiveness and inefficiency witnessed from the previous round of globalization.
Xinhua
