【Editor's Note: In order to comprehensively introduce the connotation and practice of building a community with a shared future for mankind, help people understand this initiative by President Xi Jinping, gather broad consensus, and join hands in building a community with a shared future, from April, the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Perth will publish an article each week on the theme of “A Shared Future, A Better World”.】
Implementing the three global initiatives
It is widely recognized that peace and stability, material sufficiency, and cultural-ethical enrichment represent the basic goals of human society. Development serves as the material foundation for security and civilization, security acts as the fundamental prerequisite for development and civilization, and civilization provides the cultural-ethical support for development and security. The Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, and Global Civilization Initiative proposed by China guide the advance of human society across these three dimensions. Resonating and complementing each other, they have evolved into a crucial cornerstone for building a global community of shared future, offering China’s solutions to major challenges pertaining to peace and development for humanity.
– Through the Global Development Initiative, China has issued a resounding call for commitment to development and reinvigorated cooperation, and made its contribution to resolving challenges to development and advancing global development. The fundamental aim of the initiative is to accelerate the implementation of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Its core requirement is a people-centered approach, its foremost philosophy is united, equal, balanced, and inclusive global development partnerships, and its pivotal measure entails results-oriented actions to bolster stronger, greener, and healthier global development and jointly build a global community of development.
China has hosted the High-level Dialogue on Global Development and presented 32 major measures to implement the initiative, such as creating the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund totaling US$4 billion, launching the China-FAO South-South Cooperation Trust Fund (Phase III), and strengthening support for the China-UN Peace and Development Fund. Over the past two years and more, the international community has extensively responded to the initiative and jointly tackled prominent issues including food security, poverty reduction, and energy security as the implementation mechanism steadily improves and practical cooperation delivers progress. The Global Development Promotion Center is running smoothly, and the library of the Global Development Initiative projects is expanding, with over 200 projects achieving good results. At the same time, China has issued the Global Development Report, and established the Global Knowledge Network for Development, contributing Chinese wisdom to the resolution of developmental challenges. Currently, more than 100 countries and international organizations have expressed support for the Global Development Initiative, with over 70 countries participating in the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative established at the UN.
China is committed to propelling global development through its own development. It has thoroughly applied the new development philosophy, with a focus on promoting high-quality development to foster a new development paradigm. Modernization of the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people will create a market rivaling the aggregated size of all developed countries. This will open up more opportunities for all countries and stakeholders to partake in China’s huge market. China has also pioneered major expos and fairs, exemplified by the China International Import Expo, China International Fair for Trade in Services, China Import and Export Fair, and China International Consumer Goods Expo. It has encouraged all countries and stakeholders to share the opportunities presented by China’s institutional opening up and steadily expanded institutional opening up with regard to rules, regulations, management, and standards. It has enforced the Foreign Investment Law and its supporting rules and regulations, implemented the new catalogue for encouraging foreign investment, continued to remove items from the negative list of market access for foreign investment, advanced high-quality development of pilot free trade zones, and accelerated the development of the Hainan Free Trade Port.
China is committed to win-win cooperation and common development. As the largest developing country in the world and a member of the Global South, China has made every effort to aid other developing countries and help recipient countries expand their capacity for development. China is actively engaged in international exchanges and cooperation. It has cooperated with almost 20 international organizations, including the UN World Food Programme, the UN Development Programme, the UN Children’s Fund, the UN Refugee Agency, the World Health Organization, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and executed over 130 projects in nearly 60 countries including Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. “Small but beautiful”, these projects span fields such as poverty reduction, food security, Covid-19 response, and climate change, and have benefited more than 30 million individuals. China worked actively for the adoption of and has comprehensively acted on the Debt Service Suspension Initiative of the Group of Twenty (G20), contributing more than any other G20 member to its implementation. China has signed agreements or reached understandings on the suspension of debt repayments with 19 African countries, helping Africa alleviate debt pressure.
China is committed to building an open world economy. It has become the main trading partner of more than 140 countries and regions, and signed 21 free trade agreements with 28 countries and regions. It has worked for high-quality implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, actively worked to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, and expanded its globally-oriented network of high-standard free trade areas. It has also promoted the internationalization of the Renminbi, and reinforced financial standards and its level of internationalization, thereby converging its interests closer with other countries.
– Through the Global Security Initiative, China seeks to work with the international community in upholding the spirit of the UN Charter, and calls for adapting to the profound changes in the international landscape through solidarity, addressing traditional and non-traditional security risks and challenges with a win-win mindset, and creating a new path to security that features dialogue over confrontation, partnership over alliance, and win-win results over zero-sum game.
Panel 5 Six Proposals of the Global Development Initiative |
– Staying committed to development as its first priority. Putting development front and center in the global macro policy framework, boosting policy coordination among major economies, ensuring policy continuity, consistency, and sustainability, fostering global development partnerships featuring greater equality and balance, coordinating multilateral development cooperation to generate synergy, and accelerating the implementation of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; – Staying committed to a people-centered approach. Ensuring and improving people’s wellbeing and protecting and promoting human rights through development, ensuring that development is for the people and by the people and that its fruits are shared by the people, ensuring a stronger sense of fulfillment, happiness, and security for the people, and pursuing the people’s well-rounded development; – Staying committed to inclusiveness and benefits for all. Addressing the special needs of developing countries, supporting developing countries – especially vulnerable countries facing exceptional difficulties – by means such as debt suspension and development aid, and addressing imbalanced and inadequate development among and within countries; – Staying committed to innovation-driven development. Seizing the historic opportunities created by the latest round of revolution in science and technology and industrial transformation, speeding up efforts to harness scientific and technological achievements to boost productivity, creating an open, fair, equitable, and non-discriminatory environment for scientific and technological advances, unleashing new impetus for post-pandemic economic growth, and joining hands to achieve leapfrog development; – Staying committed to harmony between humanity and nature. Improving global environmental governance, actively responding to climate change, building a community of life for humanity and nature, accelerating the transition to green and low-carbon development, and achieving green recovery and development; – Staying committed to results-oriented actions. Increasing the input of development resources, prioritizing cooperation in areas such as poverty reduction, food security, pandemic response and vaccines, financing for development, climate change and green development, industrialization, the digital economy, and connectivity, and building a global community of development. |
In February 2023, China officially released The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper. The document further elaborates the core concepts and principles of the initiative, elucidates its key avenues for cooperation, and presents recommendations and ideas concerning its cooperation platforms and mechanisms. This has demonstrated China’s awareness of its duty to maintain world peace and its firm determination to safeguard global security. As an international public good, the Global Security Initiative serves the interests of and maintains peace for people throughout the world.
Panel 6 Six Proposals of the Global Security Initiative |
– Staying committed to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security, and working together to maintain world peace and security; – Staying committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, upholding non-interference in others’ internal affairs, and respecting the independent choices of development paths and social systems made by people in different countries; – Staying committed to abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, rejecting the Cold War mentality, opposing unilateralism, and saying no to bloc politics and camp-based confrontation; – Staying committed to taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously, upholding the principle of indivisible security, building a balanced, effective, and sustainable security architecture, and opposing the pursuit of one’s own security to the detriment of others’ security; – Staying committed to peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation, supporting all efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of crises, rejecting double standards, and opposing the arbitrary use of unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction; – Staying committed to maintaining security in both traditional and non-traditional domains, and working together to address regional disputes and global challenges such as terrorism, climate change, cybersecurity, and biosecurity. |
China is a pillar in maintaining world peace. It is committed to handling disputes with relevant countries over territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests through negotiation and consultation. It has settled land boundary issues peacefully with 12 of its 14 neighbors along its land borders through negotiation and consultation, and delimited the maritime boundary in the Beibu Bay with Vietnam. China has faithfully fulfilled its responsibilities and missions as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It is the second largest contributor to the UN regular budget and peacekeeping assessment, and the largest contributor of peacekeeping troops among the permanent members of the Security Council. Over the past three decades and more, having sent more than 50,000 personnel to UN peacekeeping operations in over 20 countries and regions, China has become a key force in UN peacekeeping. China has dispatched more than 100 naval vessels in 45 taskforces to the Gulf of Aden and waters off the coast of Somalia to provide escort for over 7,000 Chinese and foreign ships.
Facing constant flare-ups of hotspot issues, China has been committed to fulfilling its role as a responsible major country, pushing for the resolution of international and regional flashpoints, such as the Korean Peninsula, Palestine, the Iranian nuclear issue, Syria, and Afghanistan. On the Ukraine issue, China has actively promoted talks for peace, put forth four key principles, four things that the international community should do together and three observations, and released China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis. China has dispatched the Special Representative of the Chinese Government on Eurasian Affairs to engage in extensive interactions and exchanges with stakeholders on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis.
Through the mediation of China, Saudi Arabia and Iran have achieved historic reconciliation, setting a fine example for countries in the region to resolve disputes and differences and achieve good neighborly relations through dialogue and consultation, and catalyzing a wave of reconciliation in the Middle East.
China has actively cooperated with other parties in non-traditional security domains such as anti-terrorism, biosecurity, and food security. It has proposed the International Cooperation Initiative on Global Food Security within the framework of the G20, and pushed for the adoption of the Strategy on Food Security Cooperation of the BRICS Countries. It has also officially launched the China-Pacific Island Countries Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Cooperation Center, representing yet another robust action to help developing countries tackle non-traditional security challenges within the context of the Global Security Initiative.
Panel 7 China’s Major Propositions on Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis |
Four key principles: • The sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be upheld; • The purposes and principles of the UN Charter should be observed; • The legitimate security concerns of all parties should be taken seriously; • All efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of the crisis should be supported. Four things that the international community should do together: • The international community should jointly support all efforts to peacefully settle the Ukraine crisis, call on the parties concerned to stay rational, exercise restraint, and conduct direct engagement as quickly as possible, and create conditions for the resumption of negotiations; • The international community should jointly oppose the threat or use of nuclear weapons and advocate that nuclear weapons must not be used and nuclear wars must not be fought, to avoid a nuclear crisis on the Eurasian continent; • The international community should jointly work to keep global industrial and supply chains stable and prevent disruptions to international cooperation in energy, food, and finance that could undermine the global economic recovery, especially the economic and financial stability of developing countries; • The international community should jointly provide winter relief to civilians in conflict zones, and improve humanitarian conditions, with a view to preventing a humanitarian crisis on a larger scale. Three observations: • Conflicts and wars produce no winner; • There is no simple solution to a complex issue; • Confrontation between major countries must be avoided. |
– Through the Global Civilization Initiative, China calls for jointly advocating respect for the diversity of civilizations, jointly advocating the common values of humanity, jointly advocating the importance of continuity and evolution of civilizations, and jointly advocating closer international people-to-people exchanges and cooperation. The Global Civilization Initiative makes a sincere call for the world to enhance inter-civilization exchanges and dialogue, and promote human progress with inclusiveness and mutual learning, inspiring the building of a global community of shared future.
China has hosted gatherings including the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-level Meeting, the CPC and World Political Parties Summit, and the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations. It has engaged in extensive bilateral and multilateral activities for political party exchanges and cooperation, and promoted diverse forms of civil diplomacy, city diplomacy, and public diplomacy. China has continued to deepen cooperation with the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN World Tourism Organization. It now has 43 items inscribed on the intangible cultural heritage lists of UNESCO.
China has celebrated over 30 large-scale cultural and tourist “years” (festivals), such as the China-Italy Year of Culture and Tourism, the China-Greece Year of Culture and Tourism, and the China-Spain Year of Culture and Tourism. It has promoted the steady development of 16 multilateral exchanges and cooperation mechanisms, such as the meeting of BRICS ministers of culture, as well as 25 bilateral cooperation mechanisms. It regularly hosts cultural activities at home, such as the Arabic Arts Festival and the Meet in Beijing International Arts Festival, and has held “Happy Spring Festival” celebrations outside China for more than 20 years in a row. It hosted approximately 2,000 events across over 130 countries in 2017, and has organized activities around the world under such brands as “Tea for Harmony” Yaji Cultural Salon. It has advanced cultural and tourism exchanges under the Belt and Road Initiative, carried out the Cultural Silk Road program, and established the Silk Road international theater, museum, art festival, library, and art museum alliances. It has also established approximately 3,000 pairs of sister cities or provinces with various countries, and launched the “Nihao! China” inbound tourism promotion program.
Panel 8 Four Proposals of the Global Civilization Initiative |
– Jointly advocating respect for the diversity of civilizations. Countries should uphold equality, mutual learning, dialogue, and inclusiveness among civilizations, and let cultural exchanges transcend estrangement, mutual learning transcend conflict, and inclusiveness transcend supremacy. – Jointly advocating the common values of humanity. Peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom are shared aspirations of people across the world. Countries should be open to appreciating different perceptions of values by different civilizations, and refrain from imposing their own values or models on others and from stoking ideological confrontation. – Jointly advocating the importance of continuity and evolution of civilizations. Countries should fully harness the relevance of their histories and cultures to the present times, and push for creative transformation and innovative development of their fine traditional cultures in the course of modernization. – Jointly advocating closer international people-to-people exchanges and cooperation. Countries should explore the building of a global network for inter-civilization dialogue and cooperation, enrich the contents of exchanges and expand avenues of cooperation to promote mutual understanding and friendship among people of all countries, and jointly advance the progress of human civilization. |
The international community has spoken highly of these three global initiatives, acknowledging that they reflect China’s global vision and growing international influence and provide comprehensive solutions to the challenges confronting humanity. The Global Development Initiative is highly compatible with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and resonates, in particular, with the aspirations of developing countries for greater development. The Global Security Initiative upholds the principle of common security, emphasizes comprehensive approaches, pursues sustainable security through cooperative efforts, and makes a valuable contribution to addressing international security challenges. The Global Civilization Initiative calls on all countries to respect the diversity of civilizations in the world, which is conducive to facilitating exchanges and mutual learning among different civilizations.