On Sept. 3, Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the opening ceremony of the 2016 Business 20 Summit, or B20, and delivered a keynote speech titled “A New Starting Point for China’s Development, A New Blueprint for Global Growth.”

Xi Jinping pointed out that the nearly four decades since China embarked on reform and opening up have been a time for blazing new trails, delivering tangible outcomes, achieving common prosperity and bringing China closer together with the international community. Today’s China has reached a new historical starting point.

China has the confidence and ability to maintain moderately high rate of growth and deliver more development opportunities to the world while ensuring its own development.
Xi’s remarks show that China’s experience from reform and opening up is gradually helping to advance globalization and global economic reform.

 

Providing public goods
It has been 15 years since China joined the World Trade Organization. China and the world are becoming increasingly interdependent. China’s reform and opening up policy is also a process of mutual promotion. The Hangzhou Summit presented a chance to elaborate on the logic and experience of reform and opening up, especially structural reform, making economic globalization more inclusive.

In a word, China’s foreign policy will better serve the whole world and its citizens while ensuring domestic political and economic development. One manifestation is its active attitude to provide public goods to the international community.

China-initiated public goods can be classified into three primary categories. The first is material goods. Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, China has become the major driving force for the world economy. China accounts for about 30 percent of world growth, more than double that of the second-largest contributor: the US.

As part of China’s plan to implement the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Xi announced that China will set up a fund with an initial endowment of $2 billion, to support South-South cooperation and assist developing countries in implementing their post-2015 development agenda, at the UN Sustainable Development Summit at UN Headquarters in New York in September last year.

Xi said China will also do its best to raise its investment in the least-developed countries (LDCs) to $12 billion by 2030. In addition, China will exempt the debt of all outstanding intergovernmental interest-free loans due by the end of 2015 owed by the relevant LDCs, landlocked developing countries and small island developing countries, the president said.

 

Xi also announced that China will establish an international development knowledge center to facilitate studies and exchanges by countries on theory and best practices of development suited to their respective national conditions. It will propose discussion on establishing a global energy network to better meet power demands with clean and green alternatives.

As Confucius said, “Those who want to establish themselves in society should begin by helping others to do so. Those who want to become prosperous should help others to get rich first.” That’s the thinking behind China’s support and assistance measures, which met with applause from the audience.

The second category is institutional goods. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the New Development Bank BRICS and the “Belt and Road” initiative are all institutional mechanisms launched by China that nevertheless belong to the world. The AIIB not only advances the reform of international financial system but also commits to a new path to the 21st century global governance: lean, clean and green. The “Belt and Road” initiative focuses on building a network of cooperation with mutual benefit, developing a new mode of cooperation and establishing a platform of multifaceted partnership. It advocates connectivity in policies, transportation, trade, currency and the hearts of the people.

The third category is conceptual goods. The new type of international relations featuring cooperation with mutual benefits—especially the new model of major-country relationship between China and the United States—is conducive to influencing America’s China policy. The “Belt and Road” initiative has revived the Silk Road Spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit.

Its goal is to build a community of common destiny on the foundation of Oriental wisdom. The fifth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth CPC Central Committee highlighted five development concepts: innovation, coordination, green development, opening up and sharing, and gained great recognition from the international community. China’s advocacy of a common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security framework in Asia encourages nations in the region and others elsewhere to abandon Cold War thinking and a zero-sum game mentality.

China’s plan
As the United States continues to implement its “Pivot to Asia” strategy and the international community recovers from the euro zone crisis, the world is pinning its hopes on China. Through the Hangzhou Summit, the world sees that China’s leadership is not only evident in its role as a driving force for world economy but also in its economic leadership.

 

The major goal of the Hangzhou Summit is to enable the G20 to transform from a crisis-response mechanism focused on short-term policies to one of governance that shapes long-term policies, solidifying its role as the premier forum for international economic governance. The Hangzhou Summit will become a turning point in G20 history.

Thirty-eight years have passed since China started the reform and opening up policy. Now it has become the world’s second-largest economy and assumed the rotating G20 presidency. It is one major force driving the reform of international system. China used to concentrate on its own development, and exerting an impact on the world was a secondary consideration. Now, the situation is that China and the world have entered into a dialectical relationship. Also, connectivity is a concept China has proposed to influence the world. Xi once said: “If the ‘Belt and Road’ are likened to the two wings of a soaring Asia, then connectivity is like the arteries and veins.”

 

China’s rise promotes globalization
Today, many countries tend to shift their burdens to other countries or intentionally create conflict through monetary policy or trade protection in order to benefit from the misfortunes of others. This is not the right attitude. In the 21st century, all countries should abandon the practice of gaming and forming cliques. Instead, they should strengthen cooperation and reach mutual benefits. The Hangzhou Summit shows China’s attitude in this respect. 

Now some developed countries are attributing their problems like unemployment, security and economic slowdown to globalization, claiming that in globalization they lose more than they gain. For this reason, there are doubts about whether to continue globalization.

The Hangzhou Summit took place at a historical point. It shoulders the responsibility to deepen globalization as well as promote coordinated, inclusive and sustainable development. The event connects reform of other countries and globalization with China’s reform and opening up.

 

The presidency of the G20, the AIIB and the “Belt and Road” initiative are all results of China’s reform and opening up. These mechanisms all matter in globalization and the reform of other countries. Through the five development concepts, China offers a path for the world to change the development patterns. China used to use reform to boost opening up, and now it endeavors to promote globalization by drawing upon experience from the reform and opening up.

However, some people worry that China will challenge the US-dominated international order or think that the success of the “Belt and Road” strategy will lead to the replacement of Western development mode and its values by China’s development mode. In fact, China’s wisdom is to contribute to world economic growth and regional stability through these mechanisms. Therefore, China is trying to win support from more countries, especially the US.

The two countries should discuss how to cooperate to build the AIIB and the “Belt and Road” initiative. The advantages of the two sides therefore can be integrated. For example, US soft infrastructure can be integrated with China’s hard infrastructure or the US security system with China’s economic progress. In this way, they can jointly cultivate the third-party market to promote the transformation of economic models on both sides. The relations between the two countries will also be improved.

 

Wang Yiwei is a professor from the School of International Studies at  Renmin University of China.