and
Officiating Chairman, China Study Center Nepal
Development is the perennial pursuit of human society. Under the continued impact of profound changes, when development stands at the crossroad, the need for further development becomes all the more urgent and pressing. The prolonged challenges that the world had to face due to abrupt outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic and the massive burden arising from post-recovery along with various other profound changes occurring in the world, including fallouts of Russia-Ukraine war, have pushed back the deliverance of UN Sustainable development goals by 2030, which the international community is pursuing to achieve.
Global Development Initiative (GDI):
It was at this juncture that President Xi Jinping had put forth his proposal of Global Development Initiative (GDI) at the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 21, 2021, which was also the 50th anniversary of restoration of China’s rightful place in the United Nations. President Xi called on the international community to accelerate the implementation of sustainable development goals towards a most robust, greener and more balanced global development, and also foster a Global Community of Development with a shared future. His GDI proposal has been viewed as a major initiative of this era in setting out a practical blueprint for the countries of the world and international development cooperation, championing in essence, the actions of UN Sustainable Development goals and inclusive world governance system.
State Councillor and Foreign Minister, Mr. Wang Yi, who has also been recently nominated a CPC Politburo member, had stated: “Xi’s proposal can be said to have been motivated primarily to raise the awareness of the challenges threatening the delivery of SDGs and re-prioritize and renew the global commitment of these goals”. He further added: ‘the core concept of this initiative is people-oriented and seeks realization of their well-rounded development with the ultimate goal of meeting the aspirations of all nations for a better life, by solving all difficult issues and creating more opportunities for development, leaving no countries and individuals behind.”
GDI can be an important cooperation platform for an open and inclusive partnership. It seems to have gained synergy from other initiatives including Belt and Road and has pulled together the strengths of multilateral cooperation mechanism such as the United Nations, which China regards as the core viable centre of multilateral governance system, the BRICS, the G20 and various regional and sub-regional platforms.
President Xi, while introducing the proposal, emphasized on the need for harmony between man and nature on a priority basis for development. He also pledged to follow China’s previous commitment to peaking CO2 emission before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060. China, he said, “will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad and will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low carbon energy.”
The GDI proposed by President Xi has drawn acclaim from leaders, scholars, and officials on a wider scale. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres remarked: “GDI is of great importance in advancing the realization of the UN Sustainable Goals 2030, in view of negativity and imbalance in global development”. While expressing happiness at the announcement of Xi’s commitment to climate change, the UN Secretary General called for ‘decisive action’ by all countries, especially the members of G20, to effectively contribute to emission reduction.
President Xi’s GDI proposal has garnered wide support of the international community and has led to the formation of a Group of Friends at the United Nations. The first High Level Meeting of the Group of Friends of the GDI was held on May 9, 2022, at the United Nations Headquarters, with participation of Mr. Wang Yi and the UN Secretary General Mr. Antonio Guterres, together with more than 100 UN member countries and 27 prominent international organizations.
The group focused on the strengthening of this prime initiative and its need to be developed in a more elaborate form and scope with clarity on timeline and sectoral themes, in order to make it a more effective instrument of development, matching the overall social economic and political course evolving in the world today.
The Group resolved to carry forward the objectives of GDI through policy dialogues, sharing of experience and promotion of practical cooperation. It emphasized the primary need for focusing on global crisis that confronts the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals. It also stressed the most pressing concern of the developing countries in such areas as poverty reduction, food security, economic recovery, employment, education, health and green development, which deserve priority concentration, while dovetailing Global Development Initiatives with South-South Cooperation, and the tapping of potential resources, which are lacking at the moment.
It is well known that President Xi has initially made two unprecedented mega pledges to South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund, one amounting to U.S. dollar 3.1 billion to help developing countries tackle climate change, and the second amounts to US dollar 2 billion for the developing countries to implement the UN development agenda. The size of pledges has given a big political weight to the Chinese contribution. It is said that Xi’s initiatives do thus carry, on most occasions, the feel of a ‘game changer’ in international relations.
Mention may be made of a recently held meeting of a High-level Dialogue on Global Development in Beijing on June 24, 2022, via video link, which has taken place in support of Xi’s Global Development Initiative during which President Xi delivered an important speech entitled ‘Forging High Quality Partnership for a New Era of Global Development’. He opined: “the Meeting is taking place when Covid-19 pandemic is eroding decades of gains in global development, implementation of UN’s 2030 agenda for sustainable development is countering difficulties, the North South gap keeps widening, and crises are emerging in food and energy security”. He urged the meeting to jointly create an enabling international environment and forge a global development partnership, “where the developed countries would fulfil their obligations, the developing countries would deepen their cooperation and the North and the South would work to forge a united, equal, balanced and inclusive development partnership”.
Among various other important conferences held prior to this was one related to the important organization like that of International Civil Society Solidarity Forum, which vowed to promote Global Development Initiative of President Xi in line with its guidelines and in concerted effort, along with other global development partners, as a combined driving force. Such supports to GDI in widening scales are indicative of the confidence of the prominent institutions and people at large, in the viability of Xi’s GDI proposal towards the attainment of universal global objective of promoting well-being of the people and countries at large, the developing countries in particular.
Global Security Initiative (GSI):
It is highly relevant for us to lend some thought on President Xi’s Global Security Initiative, proposed by him in July 2022, during the high-level meeting of BOAO Forum for Asia, which aroused worldwide attention. As cursorily commented by western media, it is a latest display of China’s ambition to be a leader of global governance and security architecture. Some others argued that the proposal of Global Security Initiative put forth by President Xi, was to counter US-sponsored Indo-Pacific Strategy, the Quad (US, India, Australia and Japan grouping), G7’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), USA’s Build Back Better World (B3W), EU’s Global Gateway, all designed to hammer down the ingenuity of China’s developmental connectivity initiatives and to ostensibly contain China’s rise.
Global Security Initiative, as envisaged by China, is said to have been based on the principle of ‘indivisible security’, meaning that no country can strengthen its own security at the expense of others, and calls for a ‘common comprehensible, cooperative and sustainable security and building-up of an Asian Security Model of mutual respect, openness and integration’. This principle is embodied in many national strategic documents and is based on the idea that ‘insecurity of one state affects the welfare of all others’. In other words, it frames national security as a non-rivalrous global public good. The Chinese description of GSI, still lacking in details, there seems to be no need for many countries to rush to get on board the new China-led Initiative of GSI. Nepal has also decided not to be a party to this Initiative in keeping with its general policy of refraining from joining any strategic security alliances.
There are numerous arguments for and against Global Security Initiative (GSI). But China’s argument that security and peaceful environment are inevitable prerequisites for peaceful development of the world, and are complementary to each other, seems to gain ground.
Belt and Road Initiative (BRI):
Speaking about China’s global initiatives, our attention is automatically drawn towards, first and foremost, the unprecedented Belt and Road Initiative, put forth by President Xi in immediate aftermath of his resumption of the office of Presidency of the People’s Republic of China in 2013. To understand Xi’s Global Development Initiative in its overall perspective, it would be pertinent to keep abreast, in some detail, with the arduous course that the Belt and Road Initiative, the predecessor of all China’s global initiatives, had to undergo, in a related term, to develop itself into a concept of singular unchallengeable value in its overall accomplishments.
The initiative, which was initially named as “Silk Road Economic Belt” and later as “One Belt One Road” (OBOR), has finally assumed the name of Belt and Road, popularly called BRI. The concept of BRI initiative, once at its peak, has remained all pervasive, in all activities throughout, in China’s governmental and societal hierarchies, from central to provincial, and township to village levels, when the name itself became adorable in parlance, in and outside, China. BRI has been described as the most visionary and largest ever infrastructural programme in human history with promised investment of over U.S. dollar 8000 billion, with half of the world’s population and a third of global GDP directly involved.
Belt and Road Initiative, in spite of numerous confrontational challenges and fallacious charges levelled against it, perpetrated by the US and its allies, in particular, as China’s hegemonic design of subjugating the developing countries through its state policy of ‘debt trap’, was, on the contrary, well received by more than 100 countries and 87 prominent international organizations, out of which, 147 have signed MOU with China on BRI. The Central Asian countries, being on the main-land route of Belt and Road, have been identified to embark upon greater number of BRI projects, followed by Sub-Saharan region of Africa. In the Asian neighbourhood, countries undertaking BRI projects of substantive scales, are Indonesia, Laos, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand. And countries from South Pacific to Latin America are being benefited by building their various infrastructure projects on Chinese assistance under BRI. Most of these projects are completed while others are in the process of early completion.
BRI has achieved hard won progress and significant outcome through its inherent extensive connectivity parameters under its umbrella, both in the intra-regional and intercontinental scale. BRI has remained, and is expected to continue to remain, a matchless initiative for meeting the acute developmental needs of countries involved, also as accelerator of GDI’s objectives, in the days ahead.
As for Nepal, it is a committed member of BRI, having signed its MOU with China in 2017, wherein Nepal attended both BRI World Summit, at the highest level of the President of Nepal in 2018, which culminated with the agreement on Trans-Himalayan Connectivity Network, with cross-border railways between Nepal and China. It has also signed up other nine projects under BRI relating to cross-border roads, bridges and tunnels, trade and transit ports, energy, electric transmission lines and health projects. The reluctance of the incumbent Government of Nepal to accept loans on BRI projects, seems to have also been well considered by China, as demonstrated by the agreement signed by Mr. Wang Yi and the Nepalese Foreign Minister Mr. Narayan Khadka, in Qingdao, August 9-11, this year, where both parties agreed to advance high quality Belt and Road cooperation, at which Wang Yi announced that China will undertake feasibility study of Rasuwa-Kathmandu cross border railway and will send Chinese experts to Nepal to conduct the survey work within this year.
In an overall assessment of Belt and Road Initiative, the most controversial project under BRI was the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota, often cited as an erroneous example of China’s ‘debt trap’, whereas the port was leased to China, to pay off Sri Lanka’s other foreign debts, unrelated to the port. This misinformation was dismissed by most of the interlocutors and researchers in the field. However, China’s second BRI Summit decided to resort to the selection of only high-quality projects under BRI to avoid the confusion and cause of failure in future.
Belt and Road Initiative, now in improved form, with solid provision for financing mechanisms of its own, like Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) and New Development Bank (BRICS), and BRI’s incorporation in China’s Constitution of 2017, it is certain that BRI will remain as one of the strongest pillars of Chinese foreign policy, retaining its own unique connectivity-induced global development role for a long time to come, together with the assertive role that Xi Jinping’s new Global Development Initiative will also be predominantly playing.
It is unfortunate that the world at present finds itself in the most unstable and uncertain turn of history. Passing through dreadful and long-drawn calamity of pandemic and bearing the heavy responsibility of its post recovery, humankind is undergoing several untold sufferings and skirmishes, one after another, big and small, in different parts of the world, more pronounced being the Russia-Ukraine war and its heavy fallouts, and the rise of war-borne and confrontational behaviours among the countries around.
We have recently witnessed how China, in its recent epoch-making 20th CPC National Congress, has successfully come out to stand firmly, both internally and externally, in spite of the prevailing volatile uncertain socio-economic and political situation, and has drawn a firm blueprint for carrying forward its modernization through its own path, upholding high the banner of Socialism with Chinese characteristics in a new era under the core leadership of President Xi. The strong support of 1.4 billion people of all ethnic groups in unison, its modernized army and dedicated party cadres at all levels, are by themselves, assured guarantees to Xi’s successful tenure of next five years and also conceivably beyond, through 2035, the juncture in the mid-path to the final attainment of rejuvenation by the year 2049, the centenary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.
President Xi Jinping, with wholehearted unreserved mandate entrusted to him by the 20th CPC National Congress, is expected to forge ahead with firm determination and confidence to effectively carry forward his plans of action both in internal as well as global leadership fronts.
Major International events like SCO (Sept. 15/16), G20 (Nov. 15/16) and APEC ( Nov. 18/19) Summits, which followed China’s successful CPC 20th Congress, provided opportune moments to President Xi, to explain to the flurry of World leaders attending the Summits, the decisions made by the CPC on its long-drawn objectives of achieving its national rejuvenation and China’s peaceful overtures for global developments, and its commitment to working together in cooperation with all the countries of the world and its global partners, towards the solution of multiple problems and challenges facing the world today for shared benefits of mankind.
The most notable was Xi-Biden candid dialogue, during G20 in Bali, where a kind of mutual understanding was reached to work together in a spirit of equality and respect, through reconciliation rather than confrontation as prevailing since some long years, by openly laying out respective priorities and understanding of each other’s ‘red-lines’. This can be taken as their tacit agreements on their common deliverables, pending however major breakthrough, which can be hoped to contribute to a meaningful improvements in Sino-US bilateral ties through the days in the offing.
At APEC Summit in Thailand, in the absence of both Biden and Putin, Xi had assumed singular dominant and pervasive role in asserting the exigencies of strategic Sino Pacific relationship and its high imperatives for maintenance of peace and stability in and around the region of South China Sea, while also seizing the occasion to announce that China is holding next International Summit on the Belt and Road Intiative in a more elaborate form earlier in the coming year.
Nepal is firmly committed to ‘One China Policy’ and recognizes Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang as sovereign parts of the People’s Republic of China, which it thinks is also the basic principle of global understanding. Nepalese Foreign Minister, Khadka, during his visit to Qingdao, responding to Taiwan situation, reiterated Nepal’s commitment to One China Policy and assured State Councillor Wang Yi that Nepal will not allow any activities from its soil against China. Nepal has expressed, on all occasions, its unreserved sympathy and support for the right of countries to their choice of system of governance, suitable to their own characteristics and situations, including China’s concept of whole-process democracy. Nepal has witnessed China’s rise from a hunger stricken country to the present status of a modernized state. We appreciate China’s successful achievement of its first centennial goal in building itself as a Moderately Prosperous Society in all respects. We also appreciate China’s stupendous efforts made towards abolishing absolute poverty from the country by the end of 2020, well before the target-date set by the UN SDGs.
China is in its long march towards its Second Centennial Mid-Century Goal, to build China ‘as a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, culturally advanced and harmonious’, and attain its dream of rejuvenation, as per its set objectives.
# Text courtesy: Association of Former Career Ambassadors of Nepal,( AFCAN) Vol. 3, 2023.
@telegraphnepal
