Experts call for international cooperation to sustain world economy

Without international cooperation, the world's economic system may experience a considerable slowdown, said business leaders and officials on Saturday as they discussed the outlook on global Trade at the annual China Development Forum (CDF) in Beijing. They called for the need for a rule-based multilateral trading system and expressed hopes that the private sector would shoulder responsibility and further technological development in order to boost the world economy.

As Trade negotiations between China and the U.S. are reported to continue next week, their expected progress will set the direction for the world economy's future, and whether those Trade frictions constitute further uncertainty or an opportunity for a new global economic order is still unknown.

BlackRock In. Chief Executive Larry Fink, reportedly the “most influential man on Wall Street,” said at the forum that the world economy was entering a new period and faces significant disruption.

"But it can have a good outcome if it is addressed properly," he said. Fink called on multinational corporations to take a leadership role in addressing the current crisis through purposeful capitalism.

The head of the world's largest asset management company said current challenges include the rise in populism, terrorism, protectionism, and social inequality, which are all contributing to crises in the world economy's dominant mechanisms and institutions.

It has become increasingly difficult for the WTO to serve multilateral Trade, said Michael Froman, who served as U.S. Trade representative under former U.S. President Barack Obama, in an opening statement at the forum. Froman, now Mastercard's vice chairman, saw the U.S. withdrawing from numerous international agreements and imposing unilateral tariffs on other countries in the current Trump administration.

"The enormous costs of such Trade frictions and investment protection will eventually lead to the recognition that a rules-based multilateral trading system is always more conducive to the global economy and its interests than fragmented bilateral Trade regimes," said Wang Yiming, deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council.

Wang Yiming, deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, speaks at the CDF, March 23, 2019. /VCG Photo

In the context of continuing globalization, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposes an alternative mechanism and will considerably shape geopolitics that frame the development of the world economy.

The BRI gives countries, marginalized under the system dominated by institutions such as the WTO, access to the global market, said Li Yang, an influential economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a top government think tank, and chairman of the state financial development lab.

Experts expressed hope in a new wave of technological innovation as one of the main opportunities for growth of the world economy.

Wang said technological development would increase productivity, advance the division of labor and cooperation among countries and strengthen the trend of global economic integration.

Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, told the media that investments in innovation were vital as new technologies should sustain the world economy, under the condition of a "reasonable amount of international cooperation."

The three-day CDF provides an international platform for dialogue between China's senior leadership and representatives from leading businesses, international organizations, and scholars from China and abroad.

With the objective of "Engaging with the world for Common Prosperity," more than 80 global chief executives from Fortune 500 companies worldwide participate in the forum to discuss the policies and messages coming out of China's top political season, the Two Sessions.