Chairing the High-Level Dialogue on Global Development today, the second day of the 14th BRICS summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed an audience which included the leaders of nine guest nations that had been invited—Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Nigeria, Egypt, Senegal, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Thailand. Xi was emphatic that the issue of development must be placed “front and center on the international agenda,” and that “only through continuous development can the people’s dream for a better life and social stability be realized.”
It is crucial, he said, to jointly build an international consensus to promote development, to create an international environment conducive to it and “forge a global development partnership” to “accomplish big and great things with a far-reaching impact.” Here, he said, developed countries have a responsibility to fulfill their obligations and developing countries to deepen their cooperation. The North and the South should work in the same direction “to forge a united, equal, balanced and inclusive global development partnership.” And, he declared, in this process, “no country or individual should be left behind.”
The theme running through Xi’s speech, and the BRICS Summit, was the need to implement the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which, he said, has faced challenges due to disruptions from the Covid pandemic, leading to a greater gap between North and South, and crises in food and energy security. He pointed out that “this is an age rife with challenges but also one full of hope.” Some countries, he pointed out, are politicizing and marginalizing development, building “small yards with big fences,” imposing harsh sanctions and deliberately creating divisions and confrontation. Maximum sanctions, he warned, “serve nobody’s interests, and practices of decoupling and supply disruption are neither feasible, nor sustainable.” Rather, “we need to jointly foster new drivers for global development.”
