Xiplomacy in 2021: Lighting way forward in a world darkened by pandemic

BEIJING - With the world still overshadowed by the protracted pandemic and scrambling for economic recovery, Chinese President Xi Jinping has offered his vision on and China's approach to overcoming global challenges.

Attending a series of bilateral or multilateral cloud events in the past year, Xi has demonstrated China's firm commitment to upholding international justice, helping the world defeat COVID-19, and promoting balanced, coordinated, inclusive, and green development.

His pledges and proposals, ranging from providing more vaccines to developing countries and giving top priority to development to phasing down coal consumption, have won wide recognition and are expected to play constructive roles in a post-pandemic world.

WALKING THE TALK ON PANDEMIC RESPONSE

With new variants of the coronavirus raging globally, vaccines remain humanity's best chance of emerging from the pandemic.

Under Xi's leadership, China has provided more COVID-19 vaccines overseas than any other country in the world.

Taking the lead in proposing making vaccines "a global public good," Xi solemnly proposed a Global Vaccine Cooperation Action Initiative, including six measures, at the G20 summit in Rome. These measures include strengthening vaccine R&D cooperation, providing more vaccines to developing countries, and advancing mutual recognition of vaccines.

Xi promised that China would supply a total of 2 billion doses of vaccines to the world this year. As of Dec 20, China had provided close to 2 billion doses to over 120 countries and international organizations, accounting for one-third of the total number of doses administered outside China.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Xi announced that China would provide another 1 billion doses of vaccines to Africa. It includes 600 million doses as a donation and 400 million doses to be provided through such means as joint production by Chinese companies and relevant African countries.

In addition, China will undertake 10 medical and health projects for African countries and send 1,500 medical personnel and public health experts to Africa, Xi said.

GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE

As global development has reached a critical juncture, Xi, taking the UN stage in September 2021, outlined a blueprint for global development and cooperation.

Addressing the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Xi proposed the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and called on the international community to strengthen cooperation in areas of poverty alleviation, food security, COVID-19 response and vaccines, development financing, climate change, green development, industrialization, digital economy and connectivity.

The initiative calls for staying committed to development as a priority, to a people-centered approach, to benefits for all, to innovation-driven development, to harmony between man and nature, and to results-oriented actions.

The initiative, which aims to steering global development toward a new stage of balanced, coordinated, and inclusive growth, is another important public good provided by China to the international community in the face of mounting challenges.

The GDI is an initiative to support the development of developing countries, promote global economic recovery in the post-pandemic era, and strengthen international development cooperation.

It identifies eight priority areas of cooperation and charts feasible pathways to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

GREEN FUTURE

After announcing, in 2020, that China would strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, Xi reiterated China's determination to achieve the goal and its commitment to green development while attending multiple cloud meetings in 2021.

China will strictly control coal-fired power generation projects and limit the increase in coal consumption over the 14th Five-Year Plan period and phase it down in the 15th Five-Year Plan period, Xi said.

China will increase support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad, Xi announced, while addressing the general debate of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

China also hosted the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) this year. Addressing the COP15 meeting, Xi announced China's initiative to establish a Kunming Biodiversity Fund and take the lead by investing 1.5 billion yuan ($235 million) to support biodiversity protection in developing countries.

"If we humanity do not fail Nature, Nature will not fail us," Xi said.