China key partner in promoting world's sustainable future

BEIJING, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- Officials, experts and scholars from home and abroad have highlighted China's role in global partnership for sustainable development during the Fourth China and International Development Forum.

In-depth dialogues and exchanges were made on strengthening international development cooperation and facilitating the realization of the United Nations (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the forum, which was held in Beijing on Friday.

With less than 20 percent of the UN SDGs on track, collective efforts are crucial to bring the world back on a trajectory towards a sustainable future amid the headwinds of the pandemic, wars and conflicts as well as climate change, said Beate Trankmann, resident representative of the United Nations Development Programme in China.

China is now among the top providers of development finance globally, said Trankmann, underlining the country's role in contributing to world sustainable development through channels such as the South-South cooperation.

Li Junhua, UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, hailed China's active engagement in UN processes, highlighting such programs such as the Global Development Initiative and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

By June 2023, China had signed more than 200 BRI cooperation agreements with more than 150 countries and 30 international organizations across five continents, yielding a number of signature projects and small-scale yet impactful projects.

China's contribution brings great optimism in realizing UN SDGs, Li noted.

Through multiple cooperation and development funds, the country has provided critical support to a wide range of SDGs, which benefits developing countries, he added.

China has always supported UN SDGs, and it really tries to work as a group with developing countries, Hugo Slim, senior research fellow with the University of Oxford, told Xinhua in an interview on the sidelines of the forum.

Rather than standing apart, China works as one of the developing countries on the SDGs with alternative models of development in comparison with those of the West, he said.

Through practices and efforts for over more than 70 years, a Chinese model of international development cooperation has been established, said Yu Zirong, vice president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a think tank under the Ministry of Commerce.

The model is efficient and pragmatic, green and inclusive, and it pursues equality, mutual benefits and win-win results, while not interfering in other countries' internal affairs or attaching political conditions, he said.

Based on its own development experience and comparative advantages in fields such as infrastructure construction, China has combined its foreign aid with two-way trade and investment to help developing countries break through bottlenecks in economic and social development, Yu added.

From 2013 to 2022, the cumulative value of imports and exports between China and BRI partner countries was 19.1 trillion U.S. dollars, with an average annual growth rate of 6.4 percent. Cumulative two-way investment between China and partner countries came in at 380 billion U.S. dollars, according to earlier data.

Talking about China's green development progress, Slim said the country has advanced the transition to renewable energy, such as solar power and wind power, adding that its development philosophy of living in harmony with the nature can be traced back to thousands of years in the Chinese civilization.

Trankmann also noted that China can help advance sustainable development results with partner countries in areas including green energy transformation and green finance, building on its strength and experience.