Better multilateralism needed to ward off risks

There is an urgent need to strengthen inclusive multilateral collaboration as the world must rise to face the risk of a global economic recession and the shared challenge of climate change, foreign and Chinese experts said on Thursday.

To achieve that goal, efforts should be made to better include developing countries in global economic governance and to ensure an equal distribution of the benefits of globalization among different populations, they said.

China, they added, will not seek decoupling, but safeguard the stability of the global supply chain together with other countries, despite the international rise in protectionism and nationalism.

"More than ever, with all the global shocks that we have seen, we need stronger multilateralism," Hanan Morsy, deputy executive secretary and chief economist of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, said at a session of the Global Strategic Dialogue (2023) in Beijing on Thursday.

The dialogue was co-hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and China Daily.

The session was themed "Globalization and Economic Development".

The world needs to work together to address global shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, said Morsy who also acknowledged that globalization is facing the challenges of rising nationalism.

To further advance globalization, it is important to have a more inclusive system that is more representative of the entire world and the voices of developing economies, including African ones, she said.

Morsy called specifically for reforms to the global financial architecture, including the quota system of the International Monetary Fund, to allow African economies to have a greater say in and access to financial resources.

Yi Xiaozhun, former deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization, also stressed at the session the need to further promote multilateral, inclusive collaboration as no economy alone can survive the multiple global crises, including the risk of a global economic recession amid the emergence of regional conflicts.

Yi said: "It is not only important to help African and Latin American economies — including some least-developed ones — to reap the benefit of globalization, but ensure that the wealth brought by globalization is well distributed within a country. Otherwise, populism, nationalism and even protectionism would still emerge."

Michele Geraci, former undersecretary of state at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, said one of the obstacles to promoting globalization is the lack of sound analysis and effective communication of how globalization has benefited lower-income groups.

There is a need to explain the benefit of trade to all members of the population, instead of only focusing on the aggregate benefit, Geraci said via an online link.

Despite the rise in protectionism globally and the United States' attempts at ousting China from the global supply chain, Yu Yongding, an academic member of the CASS, said China will further promote trade liberalization, adhere to multilateralism and advocate the authority of WTO and other international institutions.

He stressed that China's new development paradigm — in which the domestic market is the mainstay and the domestic and international markets reinforce each other — does not mean China seeks to decouple with the rest of the world.

"China will not voluntarily withdraw from the global industrial chain. Instead, China will uphold the integrity of the global supply chain together with other countries," Yu said.

In the meantime, China should get prepared for the worst-case scenario that globalization could still face headwinds in the next five to ten years, Yu said, urging efforts to fully tap into the country's internal growth engine and strengthen investment in education and high-tech industries.