CHINA> Opinion
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CHINA> Opinion
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Narrowing the trust deficit
By Zhu Qiwen (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-10 08:38
One year after the global financial crisis has spread to almost every country and triggered a crisis of confidence in the global economy, the Summer Davos in Dalian - that opens today - is set to help build trust, to generate a new wave of economic growth. "I think this meeting in Dalian can play a very crucial role in terms of boosting confidence in fighting the global crisis," says Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The world has been substantially changed by the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September. This will be one of the key topics for discussion in the Summer Davos, the annual meeting of the New Champions. New Champions are particularly dynamic companies. They are companies that are innovators and have strong technology components - companies which, in general, are optimistic. "These companies are our main participants in Dalian, so I feel the message they send out will be a positive one," says Schwab. While the future development of the global economy depends greatly on external conditions, it also depends on trust. "And I think Premier Wen Jiabao has mentioned this many times. So we have to create a situation of trust, and I hope Dalian will contribute to building such trust," adds Schwab. The Summer Davos in Dalian will bring together more than 1,300 influential government and business leaders and thinkers to build the public-private partnerships necessary to transform and revitalize the global economy in a manner that is sustainable over the long term. "The global crisis has taught us that there is not only a need for more global cooperation but also a need to think much more strategically," says Schwab. "We should act not only when a crisis has occurred. We should evaluate global risks and possible systemic failures in advance." The WEF's Global Redesign Initiative is an attempt at a comprehensive effort - at a more academic level - to better prepare the world for the many risks it may have to confront. "Those risks are all interrelated, but we have a tendency to look at them from a single dimension," says Schwab. Besides dealing with the current economic crisis, the international community faces the challenges of concluding the Doha round of trade talk quickly and making progress in the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen this December. "The Doha round is important not just to create a more fair and open trading system. It is a test of the willingness of global governments to cooperate with each other," he says. Trade ministers from the world's key trading nations managed to inject momentum in stalled global trade talks after an informal two-day meeting in New Delhi last week. As a result, WTO negotiators will gather in Geneva on Sept 14, more than a year after ministerial-level discussions collapsed over a spat between industrialized and emerging markets over how to open up trade. As to the Copenhagen climate change conference, the WEF chairman was personally optimistic but admitted that it might be difficult to reach a consensus. "I think governments have become aware of what sort of action is needed. We have made progress in terms of recognition of the need to act. But we should not forget that whatever we do will require sacrifice," he says. He insisted that it was absolutely necessary to have clean growth since in terms of CO2 emissions and its impact on climate change, the world is at the tipping point. "I hope, in Copenhagen, we will decide what we finally should do because we don't have too much time to do brainstorming or to think about the issue; we have to act fast and decisively," the WEF chairman says. The WEF is itself very involved in clean growth and has created a task force consisting of many international companies as also scientific organizations and international organizations, to create energy-efficient technologies that could be replicated at the global level quickly. |
