'Sunshine' prescription still remedy for pandemic-hit global economy's ills: China Daily editorial

Sunday marked the fourth anniversary of President Xi Jinping's keynote speech at the opening of the 2017 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

WEF Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab said in 2018 that Xi's pro-economic globalization speech brought "sunshine" at a time when the world was experiencing a sluggish economy, anti-globalization, as well as uncertainty and volatility.

That evaluation is even more pertinent now, as what the world has experienced ever since has only served to highlight the foresight of Xi in stressing the need to strike a balance between efficiency and equity to ensure that different countries, different social strata and different groups of people all share the benefits of economic globalization.

As Xi said in his speech, problems are not to be feared, what should concern us is refusing to face up to problems and not knowing what to do about them.

The raging pandemic — as of this weekend the novel coronavirus had infected 95 million people and killed 2 million — has prompted some to call for the closing of economies, as if being totally isolated from one another can starve the virus to death.

But that is not the remedy as that will inflict systemic wounds on the already seriously affected global supply chains, the sustaining of which is an essential foundation for not only the global economy, but also the fight against the virus.

Quoting a line from a classical Chinese poem — "Honey melons hang on bitter vines; sweet dates grow on thistles and thorns" — Xi said that countries needed to adapt to and guide economic globalization, cushion its negative impacts, and deliver its benefits to all countries and all nations.

That's why, China, the European Union and many other economies, have been trying their best to strike a dynamic balance between pandemic prevention and control efforts and reviving their economies.

The pandemic has indeed impeded the process of economic globalization, but it can be seen that the general trend of opening-up and cooperation remains unchanged. In other words, how the situation evolves hinges on what choice countries make.

Despite the unilateralism and narrow-minded geopolitical game of the outgoing US administration, it is already a consensus of the international community that trade and cooperation will only be heightened after the virus is tamed.

Four years ago, Xi called on all members of the international community to strive to build a community with a shared future by adopting a well-coordinated and interconnected cooperative approach, promoting fair and equitable global governance, and pursuing balanced, equitable and inclusive development.

The prescription Xi wrote out four years ago is still a curative one today.