Zhang Shuhua, director of the Institute of Political Sciences, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argued that an economic solution was required to resolve the Ukraine-Russia conflict, in a Global Times conference on Dec. 17. Eight Chinese scholars had spoken on the topic of how the Russia-Ukraine conflict might end, during one of the four panels in the 2023 Global Times Annual Conference, which overall discussed “China and the World after the 20th CPC National Congress.”
After situating the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a continuation of the post-Cold War order, at a time when “the moral and professional standards of Western politicians have declined sharply,” Zhang discussed how “the Russian political elite regards the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a dispute over civilizations, political values, and world order. They believe that Western values and models are going downhill, but Russia can’t come up with an attractive economic model, development model, or political model that can replace them. Therefore, the form now is to fight back.”
His conclusion, as summarized by Global Times, was that “the focus of the future world should not only be on the Russia-Ukraine conflict but also on the economic development of the world powers. Can the development model meet the challenges, respond to the world’s changes and chaos, and propose development solutions that are consistent with the direction of development of all human civilizations and acceptable to the world in order to answer the world’s questions today.”
