Boost confidence, strengthen cooperation, push forward reform and tide over difficulties together
President Hu Jintao’s attendance at the second financial summit of G20 leaders achieves major outcomes
Chinese President Hu Jintao attended the second financial summit of G20 leaders in London from April 1 to 2, 2009. Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, who accompanied him during the visit, introduced to the journalists travelling with President Hu the outcomes of Hu’s attendance at the summit.
Yang said the summit was held against the background that the international financial crisis continues to spread and the world economy has plunged into a serious recession. Under such severe circumstances, the international community puts high expectation on the summit and hopes it is helpful of alleviating the difficulties faced by countries, boosting confidence of people and businesses, stabilizing the international financial markets, reforming the international financial system and accelerating the world economic recovery. All the parties especially hope China, as a major developing country with important influence on the world economy, can play a key role. Therefore, President Hu’s attendance at the summit drew wide attention. Participating leaders mainly exchanged in-depth views on such topics as strengthening the macroeconomic policy coordination, stabilizing the international financial markets and reforming the international financial system. With the concerted efforts of all parties, the summit achieved tangible results. In particular, its outcome document raised many highly constructive proposals on coping with the financial crisis, which has stimulated the confidence of the international community of tackling the impact of the financial crisis and promoting the world economic recovery.
President Hu delivered an important speech entitled Let Us Join Hands and Tide over Difficulties Together, actively participated in the discussions on various topics during the summit, comprehensively introduced the effective measures taken by China in order to deal with the international financial crisis, elaborated the Chinese government’s views on how to address the crisis and position of reforming the international financial institutions and system and stressed China’s proposition on reinforcing financial regulation, opposing protectionism and protecting the interest of developing countries. He raised suggestions on the specific measures to be taken jointly by China and the rest of the international community to handle the crisis in line with the major topics of the summit, which has played a constructive role of promoting the summit to achieve pragmatic outcome and greatly boosted the confidence of the international community of coping with the crisis. The international community spoke highly of and widely appreciated the unique role China played at the summit. President Hu also took the opportunity of attending the summit to extensively contact other participating leaders and reached with them wide consensus on further deepening and developing relations with their countries. In particular, the success of the first meeting between President Hu and US president Obama is of great significance to the long-term healthy and stable development of China-US relations. All the parties attach great importance to the attendance of and the important proposals raised by President Hu, made highly positive remarks on the major contributions of China to the success of the summit and its constructive role played at the summit. The attendance of President Hu demonstrates China’s responsible attitude of joining hands with the rest of the international community to cope with the challenges, stimulated the cooperation of the international community on addressing the financial crisis and promoted the development of China’s relations with relevant nations. His attendance reached the scheduled goals and achieved big success. The outcomes are as follows:
I. Elaborating China’s views about coping with the international financial crisis. In his important speech made during the summit, President Hu pointed out the pressing tasks under the current complicated and fluctuating international economic situation and explained the great importance of strengthening coordination, extending mutual support, forging ahead hand in hand and tiding over difficulties together. He noted that the international community has the objective conditions, policy tools and common aspiration to address the crisis. So long as we enhance confidence and make joint efforts, we will be able overcome difficulties and realize our common goals. He proposed four suggestions to the summit on promoting the global economic growth, emphasized that countries all sit in the same big boat of world economy and face the fierce storm of financial crisis. They need to pull together to drive the boat towards a safe direction. He said that the Chinese government always takes active part in the international cooperation on fighting the financial crisis, reiterated that the Chinese government will continue to strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination with the rest of the international community, push forward the reform of the international financial system, maintain the stability of the multilateral trade mechanism and make due contributions to restoring the global economic growth. His speech fully shows the positive attitude of China as a responsible member of the international community to join hands with other countries to handle the crisis and will further boost the confidence of countries of coping with the crisis. Participating leaders believed President Hu’s speech is far-sighted, well targeted and encouraging and China’s major efforts of overcoming the crisis and promoting the world economic growth deserve loud applauses.
II. Explaining China’s proposition on the reform of the international financial system. President Hu proposed to implement the important consensus reached at the Washington Summit and work for a fair, just, inclusive and well-managed international financial order in a comprehensive, balanced and incremental manner. He raised six suggestions on reforming the international financial system: strengthen cooperation in financial regulation and formulate as soon as possible the universally accepted regulatory standards and norms; international financial institutions should increase assistance to developing countries; the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) should play a bigger role; the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should enhance and improve its oversight on the macroeconomic policies of various economies, major reserve currency issuing economies in particular, with a special focus on their currency issuing policies; improve the governance structures of the IMF and the World Bank (WB) and increase the representation and voice of developing countries; improve the international monetary system.
President Hu made it clear that China is ready to make active contributions to increasing resources of the IMF and stressed at the same time that the IMF should seek a balance between rights and obligations and combine quota-based contribution with voluntary contribution when raising resources and the new resources should be used first and foremost to meet the needs of the less developed countries. President Hu’s remarks defined the guiding principles and pointed out workable suggestions on the reform of the international financial system and were highly valued by the participating parties at the summit.
III. Introducing the measures taken by China to cope with the crisis and the initial results. President Hu noted that the international financial crisis has brought about unprecedented difficulties and challenges to China. This crisis coincides with a crucial juncture in China’s efforts to transform the growth pattern and adjust the economic structure. New challenges coupled with existing problems have made our efforts of fighting the crisis all the more difficult. Faced with the crisis, the Chinese government has taken realistic countermeasures and implemented active and effective policies. Such measures will have a positive influence on not only the Chinese economy but also the economy of the region and the world at large. The international financial crisis will continue to have negative impact on China’s real economy, but neither the fundamentals nor the positive long-term prospects of the Chinese economy have changed in any major way, and the foundation supporting China’s sustained and relatively fast economic growth remains solid. We are striving to minimize the impact of the international financial crisis and maintain the stable and relatively fast growth of the domestic economy. In the face of the international financial crisis, China will continue to pursue the basic national policy of opening-up and unswervingly implement the win-win strategy of opening to the outside world. The active efforts of China to tackle the financial crisis and the results which have been achieved are highly admired.
IV. Expounding the position of opposing protectionism and focusing on development issues. Yang said that the rise of protectionism is a common concern of the international community. President Hu made it clear during the summit that protectionism once led to serious consequences and we must learn from historical lessons. No country should practice protectionism in the name of stimulating the economy. He appealed to the international community to jointly oppose such behaviors as discriminating against foreign workers, raising market access threshold, practicing trade and investment protectionism and abusing trade remedies, called on related countries to ease unfair restrictions on the exports of developing countries and urged all countries to jointly uphold the consensus reached to move the Doha round of talks forward with a view to achieving comprehensive and balanced outcomes at an early date. The outcome document of the summit appealed clearly to review the economic stimulus plans of countries through such supervisory mechanisms as the World Trade Organization and curb the rise of trade protectionism and asked countries to adhere to the existing consensus, move forward on the basis of current framework and finish the Doha round of talks as soon as possible.
Yang said that the developing countries are most seriously hit by the crisis and the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) process is also impacted. As the biggest developing country in the world, China spares no efforts to safeguard the interest of developing countries. President Hu called on the international community to pay attention to and minimize the impact of the crisis on the developing countries, especially the least developed ones. The international community, the developed countries in particular, should shoulder their due responsibilities and obligations and fulfill their commitment of providing assistance and reducing debts. Although the international financial crisis has caused tremendous difficulties to countries in the world, the MDGs process should in no way be disrupted. President Hu pledged that China will further support other developing countries. The opinions expressed by President Hu fully demonstrate China’s active attitude of maintaining the interest of developing countries and helping other developing countries to address the crisis, which is widely recognized by the developing world, especially the African nations.
V. Promoting the development of China’s bilateral relations with relevant countries. Being significant and fruitful, President Hu’s meeting with President Obama is the first one between the two heads of state after Obama took office. The two leaders exchanged opinions extensively on the China-US relations and the major issues of common concern, agreed to make joint efforts to build the all-round China-US relations with active cooperation in the 21st century and establish the China-US strategic economic dialogue mechanism and reached consensus on further deepening the mutually beneficial cooperation in a wide range of areas. Obama accepted the invitation of President Hu to visit China in the second half of this year. The meeting opened a new era for the healthy and stable progress of China-US relations. President Hu reached important consensus with Russian President Medvedev on pushing forward the China-Russia strategic partnership, jointly coping with the international financial crisis and strengthening the bilateral cooperation in international affairs. President Hu and British Prime Minister Brown during their meeting entered into wide consensus on addressing the international financial crisis, promoting the international financial system reform and developing the China-Britain relations. President Hu also exchanged opinions with French President Sarkozy on advancing the China-France relations and handling the international financial crisis. Hu and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso agreed to expand consensus, reinforce communications and cooperation and promote the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations. He exchanged in-depth views with Brazilian President Lula on developing the bilateral relations, implementing the outcomes of London financial summit and the international and regional issues of common concern. They agreed to enhance communications and coordination in such international affairs as addressing the international financial crisis. President Hu and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd agreed to further develop the bilateral relations and reached wide consensus on strengthening the contacts of leaders of the two countries, deepening the bilateral trade and economic cooperation, coping with the financial crisis together and expanding cooperation in multilateral fields. He also discussed with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak the situation on the Korean Peninsula and how to jointly tackle the financial crisis.
Yang noted that the attendance of President Hu at the summit has a tight schedule with intensive activities. President Hu spared no pains and took all the opportunities to elaborate China’s position and proposition and strengthen communications with the international community, which has achieved sound results, displayed the diligent, pragmatic and efficient work style of the Chinese leaders and was spoken highly of by the international media.
He added that the G20, composed of major economies in the world, is an important and effective platform of coping with the existing threats and challenges in the international financial and economic sectors. The summit put forward countermeasures to the international financial crisis. The success of the summit fully demonstrated the firm confidence of G20 members of addressing the crisis, maintaining stability and promoting growth and played a positive role of stabilizing the world economy and tackling the financial crisis. The G20 leaders decided to hold another summit this year to review the implementation of various commitments. China is ready to join hands with other members to promote the concrete and effective implementation of the London summit and make greater contributions to the international cooperation on fighting the financial crisis, accelerating the global economic growth and pushing forward the reform of the international financial system.