An “institutionalised” China-US G2 framework could offer a “structural guarantee” for global peace in a world beset by crises, a high-profile adviser to Beijing has said.
Zheng Yongnian, a noted Chinese political scientist, said the world was faced with four intertwined challenges – geopolitical conflicts, increasingly “religionised” societies, imbalances in the global economy and the fading of the UN-centred governance system. He characterised this collective breakdown as a “crisis of modernity”.
A pressing question was how to move beyond the US’ or European Union’s bilateral trade disputes with Beijing, to rebalance the global economy by having all three sides work together, Zheng told the Baichuan Forum in Shenzhen, southern China, on Saturday.
He warned that while it might be economically “possible” for the US and Europe to set up cooperative global development mechanisms with China, deep geopolitical, ideological, and structural differences would make this “very difficult” to achieve.
Zheng, dean of the school of public policy at Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, argued that China and the United States might each adopt an “open-source” approach to international development, applying their strategies to regions where they held a distinct comparative advantage.