While the summit of the world's twenty major economies is approaching, the United Nations 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda) is about to turn one year old. Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets set the scene for economic, environmental, and social progress over the next 15 years.
Abstract
The G20 – comprising 19 countries and the EU, with representatives from the Bretton Woods institutions and established just at the turn of the century - provides a new way forward for transnational governance that works for not only China, but also for 19 other major economies.
Wang Wen, Executive Dean, Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China (RDCY).
At a time when the economic transition in China is casting shadows on the weak world recovery, and the country is further increasing military spending at double-digit rates, it is key to assess how far President Xi has gone in fulfilling the “China Dream” of ascendance to cultural, economic and military power.
Even more important is to try to figure out what the substance of the “China Dream” is likely to be in the near future. The current risk is that the Chinese people and the Chinese government are dreaming different dreams, and that Xi’s “China Dream” might be more a dream for the country and much less so for the people.
China has recently reached a series of symbolic milestones: the Yuan’s inclusion in the IMF’s SDR basket; the new China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); the market economy status by a number of countries.
The 2016 Chinese G20 Presidency will provide a timely occasion for China to better define its role in global economic governance. However, progress on reforms is lagging behind expectations and international tensions are on the rise.
This volume explores the viability of the China Dream and analyzes its major challenges.
Large parts of the territorial waters in the South China Sea are contested and China is the biggest and the most assertive claimant country. In the South China Sea Beijing’s territorial claims include the Paracel Islands (also claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam), the Spratly Islands (claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei) and the Scarborough Shoal, claimed by both Taiwan and the Philippines.
There are curious parallels in US and Chinese foreign policy these days. Just as many - wrongly - believe that the US rebalance to Asia is driven by China’s meteoric rise, some analysts speculate that China’s “westward march”, in particular Xi Jinping’s Silk Road Economic Belt and XXI Century Maritime Silk Road initiatives, is a response to the newly invigorated US presence on its eastern littoral. The US is a factor in Chinese thinking, just as China is a factor in US policy. But in neither case is it determinative?
Two years after Xi Jinping was elected President of China, the country is undergoing a profound transformation that will shape its political and economic position over the coming years.
Whether Xi will succeed or fail in pursuing his “China Dream” development plan will ultimately depend upon his ability to successfully manage the end of China’s two decades of astonishing economic growth, and to adapt the country to the so-called economic “new normal”.
Xi’s term will be key to find out whether – and to what extent – China is going to further scale-up its position in the international arena or remain stuck in the middle of a decades-long transition.
How profoundly has China changed since Xi Jinping came to power two years ago? How is the President tackling the country’s internal and external challenges? Will he be able to secure a more sustainable model of development to the country?
This report covers most of the major economic and political changes China is going through, both at the domestic and international level, also with a view to sketching out possible scenarios for the next years.
It is an interesting and intense November in international relations. The APEC Summit in Beijing has gathered the leaders of a number of countries, which represent 54% of the world Gdp; 9 of them are G-20 members. The G-20 Summit itself, taking place in Australia (15-16 November), seems to once more highlight the centrality of the Pacific region in the world economy and politics. At the region’s core, China is slowly but steadily taking the lead and asserting its own centrality.
When Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping meet in Beijing this week, they will try to reverse the downward spiral in relations between their two countries. There is a growing sense that a promising partnership, one that was captured by the agreement to forge a “new type of major country relations,” has lost its momentum and threatens to run off the rails.
Two Asian leaders who planned to meet at the APEC meeting in Beijing actually did just that: on November 10 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping met for a short but nonetheless symbolically very important encounter. During their reportedly not exactly ‘warm-hearted’ encounter, Abe and Xi reportedly agreed to make efforts to work on maritime crisis management in order to prevent further Japanese-Chinese maritime clashes in disputed territorial waters in the East China Sea.
