07:31     11 November 2023    

Editor's note: The sixth China International Import Expo (CIIE) is being held in Shanghai from November 5 to 10. The CIIE, as the world's first import-focused expo held on a national level, is a testament to China's commitment to facilitating economic globalization and integration. How does China support changes to the international architecture that will do more to promote an open world economy? To explain the concept of China's development, CGTN and China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy (CIIDS) have launched the "Chinese modernization: Sharing prosperity" series. In this episode, Gordon Brown, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, shared his thoughts on this topic. The views expressed in the video are his own and not necessarily those of CGTN. Gordon Brown: Amid the seismic shifts we're all seeing as we become a more technologically interconnected, more economically integrated, more socially and culturally independent world, but sadly, also a more protectionist and fermented world, at the very time unity is needed. We have to think boldly and laterally, for if we try to build the present in the image of the past, we will miss out entirely on the great opportunities of the future. But first, let me start by acknowledging China's contribution to the global economy, as a result of your 40-year-long success in achieving economic growth at a rate of 6, 7, 8, 9 and sometimes 10 percent, something that any Western finance minister like I was can only dream of. Let me also acknowledge your spectacularly successful record in making the biggest contribution to the fallen world poverty that we have now seen over the last 30 years. Without your effort, the sustainable development goals to abolish extreme poverty could never be achieved in our lifetimes. Let me add a special note from my position as United Nations envoy for global education, that your achievement in taking education from low levels of access 40 years ago to some of the highest levels of access in the world, securing education for almost every child of primary and secondary school, is a challenge for all countries to learn from, so that we can end a situation where even today 260 million school-age children are not at school. Now, when in 2008, and I was prime minister of the UK, we faced a global financial collapse that started in America. I proposed a new global economic form of leaders, the G20. And I was delighted that the government of China agreed to join. And this not only led the way to recovery with an immediate agenda to raise, in particular, infrastructure investment to get the world moving forward, again, vital actions that prevented recession descending into depression. And now faced with today's multiple crises that are threatening death and destruction, there should also be a coming together. There are, of course, policies that we can adopt together issue by issue. For example, for climate and for pandemic prevention, where China and the West have made progress, sharing similar objectives for carbon net zero, and where the United States, China and others have now agreed on a fund of funds to prepare for and prevent future pandemics. But if cooperation is ever to be continuous, and if it is to be more than one-off and superficial, we need to find a more solid and sustained basis for something broader than issue-by-issue cooperation. In other words, we want institution-by-institution cooperation, and we need, therefore, to find a better global framework within which we are happily able to work together. China has been clear on two major points about our international architecture. China wants, as I do, our global institutions to work and to be effective. And China also wants, as I too want, the institutions to be reformed for our new age. As a statement made by the leaders of China said, "We will take an active part in reforming and developing the global governance system. As a participant in, builder of, and contributor to that system, China hopes to help the system move with the times through innovation and improvement, rather than reinvent the wheel." So this would mean us accepting your proposals for reform of the United Nations, to strengthen the Economic and Social Council, to update the peacekeeping missions for today's world in moderating and preventing conflicts around the world. China already plays a pivotal and important role. China, like the West, can support changes to the international architecture that will do more to promote an open world economy. We must strengthen the IMF so that the world has an early warning system that could prevent future crises. And there is also much common ground between America, Europe and China in seeking a reform of World Trade Organization that should work in concert with your RCEP and other regional trade bodies elsewhere, to remold as the Chinese government seeks trade liberalization and facilitation to make global trade more accessible, more open with improved settlement mechanisms for trade disputes.