The 2026 Global Governance Forum (Xiong’an), held from October 23 to 25, in Xiong’an New Area, North China’s Hebei Province concluded on Sunday with the release of the “Global Governance: Xiong’an Vision,” (as yet unavailable online) which calls for stronger multilateral cooperation, reforms to global institutions, and greater representation for developing countries in international decision making. Opening remarks by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi were previously reported by EIR.
The forum’s outcome document, as reported by CGTN, called multilateralism “the only viable way to effectively address the global governance deficit” and urged that the UN’s central role be safeguarded while its effectiveness is improved. It pressed for Global South countries to take part in international rule-making, agenda-setting and decision-making, and called on developing countries to strengthen their own unity. On economics, it called for making development a global priority, accelerating the UN 2030 Agenda and preparing a post-2030 development agenda, reforming the WTO to address digitalization and green development, and improving the representation of the global economy in the international financial architecture. It named climate, artificial intelligence, cyberspace and outer space as areas needing stronger cooperation: a fair climate-governance system with more financial and technological support for developing countries; the UN as the central platform for AI governance, with AI kept “under human control”; peaceful uses of outer space; and respect for countries’ digital sovereignty. It welcomed the “new cooperation mechanisms and research initiatives launched during the forum”—among them the Global Governance Research Center that Wang Yi announced in his opening speech—and called for a shift in global governance from “elite consensus” to “societal participation” and from “forum dialogue” to “sustained networks of cooperation.”
The key attendees included: Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who delivered a keynote speech and read a message from President Xi Jinping, which outlined the goals of the Global Governance Initiative (GGI); Lyu Deqiang, President of the Singapore chapter of the Global Responsible AI Council; Ambassador Cai Run, Head of the Chinese Mission to the European Union (who spoke at a related precursor/seminar event at the European Parliament in mid-October), and Wu Ken, President of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA), which hosted the event.
Other notable attendees included former Nepalese President Bhandari; former German Chancellor Schröder; former Kyrgyz Prime Minister Otorbayev; former Romanian Prime Minister Dăncilă; UN High Commissioner for Refugees Salih (whom Wang Yi met with separately on the sidelines); UN Under-Secretary-General Ryder; UN Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) Gherman, and UN Human Rights Council Independent Expert on Democratic and Equitable International Order Georgios Katrougalos.
Speaking at the closing press conference, Wu Ken said that the forum produced fruitful results through contributions from Chinese and international participants. Wu added that it strengthened global consensus on improving governance, advanced efforts to put the Global Governance Initiative into practice, and promoted mutual learning between China’s governance experience and global governance, reported CGTN.
The “Global Governance: Xiong’an Vision” said the world was entering “a new period of turbulence and transformation,” with rising global challenges making governance reform increasingly urgent. The document calls multilateralism the only effective way to address the global governance deficit and urges safeguarding the UN’s central role while improving its effectiveness. It also presses for greater Global South participation in international rule making and decision making, arguing their representation must be strengthened, and encourages developing countries to deepen unity and contribute more to global governance.
The site of the conference, the Xiong’an New Area, is remarkable in that it was established in April 2017 in Hebei Province, and is a state-level economic zone designed as a high-tech “city of the future” to relieve Beijing of non-capital functions. Some of the attendees of the conference toured the area, noting its “three-in-one” construction—above ground, underground (featuring integrated utility tunnels for electricity, water, and drainage), and in the “cloud” (supported by an urban computing center and cloud-based data systems). Seemingly taking a page from Lyndon H. LaRouche’s 1987 article, “Design of Cities: in the Age of Mars Colonization,” the area is designed such that essential goods and services are reachable within a 15-minute walk. Such a design represents a new hope for the Global South to lead the way with the development of new cities across the planet.
