Listen to more voices

President Hu Jintao is in Japan today - his second visit this year - for the enlarged dialogue with the leaders of Group of Eight industrial countries, who gather there on July 7-9. It is Hu's fifth presence for the supplement to the G8 summit.

In the past five years the G8 leaders have added dialogues between leaders of developed and developing countries to their "rich nations' club". Ideally, the change is expected to build a platform where some developing countries could have dialogues with the rich nations on major international issues.

More voices should be heard. Cooperation between industrial nations and developing economies is necessary to address global problems such as realizing the millennium development goals by the target date of 2015. The eight goals, laid down by the United Nations, range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education.