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Tuesday, December 15, 2020, 12:07
Beijing Forum 2020 highlights
By China Daily
Tuesday, December 15, 2020, 12:07 By China Daily

The Beijing Forum 2020, co-organized by Peking University, the Beijing Education Commission, and Chey Institute for Advanced Studies, opened at Peking University on Dec 5. The event focused on the theme of "The Harmony of Civilizations and Prosperity for All-Globalization under the Impact of the Pandemic: New Challenges and Opportunities". Excerpts from some speeches at the international academic forum are shared on this page.

Pandemic a wake-up call

The United Nations is working to save lives, control transmission of the virus and ease the fallout. We are advocating a massive rescue package for the world's most vulnerable people and countries, and for a people's vaccine available to everyone, everywhere. And we are pressing for a global ceasefire and fighting misinformation. We must also learn the lessons of the crisis.

Even before the pandemic, inequalities were rising and divisions were widening. The pandemic must be a wake-up call for these ills, too. That means getting on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. China has been a leader in this work-aligning its national programs with the targets and lifting 850 million people out of poverty, the greatest anti-poverty accomplishment in history. And it means accelerating climate action. I welcome China's pledge to reach a peak of carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

From health to the economy to the climate and beyond, we are facing the biggest set of global challenges in generations.

The decisions we make in the coming months will shape the lives of generations to come. International cooperation will be essential. In that spirit, please accept my best wishes for a fruitful forum.

Antonio Guterres is secretary-general of the United Nations.

Genes for universities

Hao Ping.jpg

In the face of this severe public health emergency, universities have fulfilled their mission, shouldered responsibilities and played an indispensable role. I would like to share some personal thoughts.

Universities must promote the humanistic spirit and fulfill their mission of educating people. Emphasizing human values and shaping human souls is the consensus of human civilization and the essence of education.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, medical workers, scientific researchers and community workers all over the world have been fighting around the clock on the front line. They have showed the best of human nature with their courage and perseverance, and they are vivid examples of what kind of people we expect education to foster.

Universities must persist with innovation and give full play to the power of science and technology. Universities should be more open and inclusive and strengthen international cooperation.

Universities must seek development in view of the future and reform the education model. The impact of the pandemic on universities is not only "transient", but will reshape the mission, responsibilities, pattern and model of higher education and internalize them into the "new genes" of universities.

The pandemic has been a global catastrophe, but we firmly believe that the pandemic not only brings challenges, but also hones the capabilities of a strong country. For a united world, the pandemic brings both risks and spiritual strength.

Hao Ping is president of Peking University.

Working together for prosperity for all

Threats and challenges worldwide, especially the COVID-19 pandemic, continue to bring downward pressure on the global economy. How to embrace globalization with more inclusiveness in a bid to build a community with a shared future for mankind, and join hands to form a stronger response to global governance and promote world peace and development is a common issue of the times.

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has mapped out an all-around blueprint for the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), seeking high-level opening-up and cooperation for win-win situations and promoting a new dual-circulation development pattern which centers on the domestic economy and integrates the domestic economy with the global economy. China is the world's largest market and has enormous market potential to tap. While promoting the new development pattern, the Chinese market will increasingly expand in both scale and capacity, thus providing more massive space for other countries to enter the market and share the opportunities created in China.

Today (at the forum) experts and scholars from different countries and regions contribute their ideas and wisdom to the future of globalization, which shows it is our common wish to promote the harmony among various civilizations and mutual prosperity.

We need to put aside disagreements and seek common ground while reserving differences, to encourage the development of diverse civilizations. In the fight against the pandemic, the international community supports each other, presenting convincing evidence that in this closely connected world we are all in the same boat, as the virus knows no borders. Solidarity and cooperation is an inevitable choice to respond to challenges. A partnership can be established among both the like-minded and those that seek common ground while shelving difference.

We need to get along with each other sincerely and build close cultural bonds. We need to put an emphasis on education's role in leading a country's development and enhancing international exchanges. We need to foster friendship among young generations.

Han Qide is vice-chairman of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, honorary president of the China Association for Science and Technology, and chairman of the Beijing Forum Senior Advisory Council.

Peaceful coexistence crucial to 'global village'

At the core of the era of globalization that distinguishes it from other eras is to take the world as a whole and develop with the theme of peaceful coexistence and the common development of mankind.

Globalization has become the dominant trend in global economic and social development. Now we are ushering in the fourth technological revolution characterized by digital technology. The transformation of the industrial economy into the digital economy is accelerating. It has profoundly changed production and people's lifestyles, changed the future and destiny of countries and the world, and has become a strategic focus of international competition.

The interdependence of countries and the formation of a global coexistence system have further expanded the "global village". Economic globalization will inevitably lead to the overlapping interests of various countries. In the "global village" in the era of globalization, challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic may surface at any time, and the community with a shared future for mankind is no longer an abstract concept.

Since the 21st century, the world has rapidly evolved from unipolar dominance to multipolarity. Emerging economies and developing countries have risen and development is more balanced between countries in the northern and southern hemispheres.

The focus of international security threats has shifted to general security issues. It requires relevant countries and the international community to work together to deal with challenges in a fair, reasonable, and thorough manner.

Global governance has become the focus of the international agenda, boosting reform in the international system and order.

The participation of emerging economies and developing countries especially makes the multilateral order and governance system more broadly representative and global, and turns global governance away from the dominance of major powers to extensive participation and global co-governance.

In an international community composed of different civilizations, cultures, ethnic groups, religious beliefs, ideologies and social systems, achieving tolerance and mutual learning has always been a major issue. This is the core issue of international relations and world order in the era of globalization.

Qiu Yuanping is a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Great opportunity for new beginning of partnership

Your theme this year-the harmony of civilizations and prosperity for all: new challenges and opportunities for globalization-resonates very deeply with myself.

We deeply believe in the power of the collaborative efforts of all stakeholders of global societies. Of course governments have a leading role, but if we want to address the global challenges, we need to engage business, civil society, the young generation, and we need to integrate, particularly universities, because universities should have new ideas, new concepts, and in such a way can substantially contribute to the progress of society.

My second thought is related to taking care of and cultivating all our resources. It's not just the physical capital, which is essential for our long-term well-being. We have to take care of and we have to cultivate also our natural capital, our environmental capital, our human capital and our social capital. So we need a new and enlightened definition of what is called capitalism, integrating all those different factors. And we also have to be able to measure performance on the basis not only of physical and financial success, but also on the basis of what we contribute to the advancement of society and taking care of the planet.

My third consideration relates to the fact that we have to put much more emphasis on the long-term aspects, and not as we do now, to a large extent, on the short-term situation.

The pandemic has forced us to think, if I may say so, just around the corner. But it is very essential if we want to progress, if we want to grow as a society, not just economically, we have to develop again, long-term perspectives. I'm very happy China with its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) has established beacons with which to guide the Chinese people into the future.

Now the fourth consideration is that we have to make much more advantage of the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution. Those technologies have been very much advanced by the pandemic. We know that many of the world's problems can only be solved if we apply new technologies, and I'm happy to see China putting high importance on developing its fourth industrial revolution capabilities.

My fifth consideration relates to our global togetherness. The pandemic has again shown us that we are interdependent. So even if we have conflicts, even if we are sometimes competitors, at the end of the day, it's our global togetherness that should be the most important objective in whatever we do to maintain and to strengthen this global togetherness, and that's what the World Economic Forum stands for.

My sixth consideration relates to the theme of this Beijing Forum, which means building harmony. I'm very impressed by the Confucian notion of he (harmony). I think we have to find again, an equilibrium in our world. We have to go away from the polarization, which we see now everywhere. I think the most important building stones are truth and trust.

And again, a great task for the universities to look for the truth of matters. Only if we have the perception that nations and the world are built on the truth, can we really establish and re-establish trust again.

My seventh point is that we have to believe in the principle of human beings-being virtuous, being benevolent, because only if we rely on this positive nature of humankind, can we mobilize all the energy which we need to construct a positive future.

My last point is that we have now a window of opportunity. We are coming out, thanks also to the leadership of China in terms of fighting the pandemic. In terms of reinvigorating its economy, we have now a window of opportunity to create this global reset which we all need. This global reset is necessary because we have seen that our previous policies, which we pursued before the coronavirus struck us, do not create the necessary inclusion of society necessary for harmonious societal development.

So we have a great opportunity at this moment like we had after World War II, to have in some way a new beginning in our global cooperation in globalization, in managing our global affairs. I hope that we will not miss this opportunity.

Klaus Schwab is founder of the World Economic Forum.

Restructuring required in wake of virus

In the midst of this pandemic, we need to cooperate globally to address this international health crisis. In a way, scientists have shown the way-there's been unprecedented cooperation among the scientific community as they have sought vaccines, better therapeutics (and) better tests. We've made enormous progress in being able to identify the disease and figure out ways of dealing with that through vaccines, and that would not have been possible without this global sharing of knowledge.

Public health is a global public good. And there has to be cooperation to make sure that the vaccines and therapeutics are made available to all the citizens of the world. We won't be safe until all of us are safe. The pandemic won't be controlled until it is controlled everywhere.

The same is true for the global recovery. The economic consequences of the pandemic have been devastating.

This is another area where global cooperation and the multilateral institutions have actually been working. One of the important instruments with which the global community can respond-and help developing countries in emerging markets-are the special drawing rights. The international community used that in 2008-09 in response to the global financial crisis. There was a vast expansion of SDRs. And I think it did help the global recovery. Some countries around the world-which didn't need to make use of the SDRs, whose economic resources were sufficient to re-lend their SDRs-said that they would donate to those countries in emerging markets and developing countries that needed it. This is a real demonstration of the kind of global cooperation that we should hope for.

As time has evolved and the pandemic has stayed with us, it is clear that the liquidity crisis has morphed into a solvency crisis. What is going to be needed is not just a stay, but a debt restructuring.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, I was asked by the president of the UN General Assembly to assemble a group of experts to address the question of what reforms were necessary to the global economic architecture as we went forward, and one of the strong recommendations of our commission was the creation of some mechanism for solving cross-border bankruptcies-defaults-and in particular, addressing the problem of sovereign debt restructuring. One of the things that the global community needs to do now is to create such a framework.

One of the lessons that we've learned from earlier debt crises is the problem of "too little, too late". If there's not a deep enough debt restructuring-and if we wait too long-the consequences will be severe. The damage will be long term, (and) there will be a huge amount of economic suffering.

We need to reconstruct the post-pandemic economy in a way that is greener, more equal, more resilient and more knowledge based.

Joseph Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University in the City of New York, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001.

Colleges need collaboration to address challenges

I believe that it is a fundamental purpose of universities to serve and challenge our societies-locally, nationally and globally.

Our institutions' response to these and other issues set the standard for how our wider societies respond to them as well. We must lead by example. But we also serve and challenge society in a much more comprehensive-a global-sense.

The greatest issues we face are global.

And as we have seen recently (and dramatically) no institution, no country, no matter how seemingly isolated, is immune to events occurring somewhere else on the planet. Whether it is understanding the molecular basis of Alzheimer's, or helping governments create more equal and inclusive economic policies, or trying to develop accurate diagnostic tests or vaccines for COVID-19-what we do in universities like Beida and Cambridge affects lives all around the world. It is in this broadest sense that I understand serving and challenging our societies.

We are now confronting an extraordinarily complex period in our global politics. The previously recognized frameworks for international relations are no longer accepted. Tensions are rising.

In place of the world of bipolar alignments that most of us grew up with, we see the emergence of a world in which overlapping sets of interests require the building of coalitions on an issue-by-issue basis.

In a world like that, collaboration between states and governments is more difficult to achieve, and harder to sustain. Political trade-offs become messier and less stable. In a world like that, what we often refer to as "Track II diplomacy"-the informal and unofficial contacts between citizens, organizations and other non-state actors-becomes more important than ever.

This is something that universities are exceptionally well-placed to do.

In the years ahead, we are likely to see a global escalation of tension in issues ranging from trade to security. And when geopolitics puts international cooperation under strain, it is crucial that academic institutions find ways to continue to work together where values and aspirations can be aligned-because the global challenges are still there, and they will continue to affect us all.

In tackling some of the big issues-from COVID-19 to the climate crisis-we need the diversity of backgrounds, of views and of expertise that can only come from equitable, open partnerships.

The creation of knowledge is a collaborative enterprise.

In a world of diminishing resources, and with challenges of all sorts increasing in complexity and scale, collaboration is imperative. It may become harder with rising political tensions, but we must find ways forward that recognize sometimes significant differences but that seek out ways to partner on great global problems.

In a world of growing disharmony, universities must keep alive dialogue, learning and sharing amongst individuals and among peoples. In a world of narrowing horizons and rising disinformation, universities must continue to be a safe environment for the open exchange of ideas and knowledge.

This is what universities around the world have done for centuries even in periods of equal and greater political disharmony. I hope we can find a way to do this for centuries to come.

Stephen Toope is vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

Cooperation in vaccine a triumph of globalization

The economic challenges of globalization have never been clearer than during the COVID-19 pandemic. The IMF estimates that COVID-19 has currently cost the world US$28 trillion. So really COVID-19 has been about striking balances, and all of these have potential implications for the economy and for globalization-freedom versus protection, nationalism versus internationalism, science versus populism.

From 180 plus candidates, we now finally have signals of vaccine efficacy for the prevention of infection or disease. At least three companies, Gamaleya, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, all have vaccine efficacies above 90 percent at two months, and with safety information at two months.

But what this tells us is an important proof of concept that a vaccine against COVID-19 is possible. And also importantly for Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech that an RNA vaccine against COVID-19, a first proof of concept for an RNA vaccine preventing an infectious disease. We've managed to develop vaccines with unprecedented speed. Almost all of them received funding from the US$18 billion program that the US government calls Operation Warp Speed, a program focused exclusively on the development of vaccines for the United States.

The CEPI-funded vaccine is global, and CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) had US$1.4 billion to give to COVID-19 vaccine research and development. The COVAX facility is led by WHO, GAVI(formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) and CEPI, the coalition for epidemic preparedness innovations.

And COVAX is really a mechanism now for the first time to grant access to innovative vaccine technology concurrently to low-and middle-income countries.

Many Operation Warp Speed companies were also funded by CEPI, and that's an important point. And remember that CEPI funding comes from within international or global perspective on access and equity and on price.

Truly, COVID-19 vaccine research and development, and importantly, COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing will be a global affair. Again, emphasizing how COVID-19 has taken what we have had to do, manufacture 16 billion doses of vaccine, and made it a truly global effort.

Another great example of COVID-19 and globalization is the multilateralism that is a part of CEPI. In this case, a number of countries, organizations like European Union, and philanthropic organizations like the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, have put together funding to not only fund work on COVID-19, but also on the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, Nipah virus, Lassa virus, Chikungunya virus. Indeed, CEPI was the first out of the blocks.

More than 190 countries have joined COVAX, which is organized by CEPI, GAVI and the World Health Organization. It's coordinated by GAVI under the ACT Accelerator activity that GAVI is responsible for. Ninety-two low-and middle-income countries could be supported by the COVAX advanced manufacturing commitments (and) 2 billion doses of WTO prequalified vaccine will be available to all of the 192 countries that are part of COVAX by the end of 2021.This represents roughly 20 percent of need.

There's work that needs to be done on continued surveillance. COVID-19 has changed the way we look at the world and at each other, and hopefully the lessons learned from COVID-19 in terms of globalization, in terms of the global economy, in terms of the rapidity of vaccine development when global efforts are put together, should be a reminder that we can do this, and that efforts like COVAX, which hope to ensure vaccine access and equity for people around the world are going to be the final triumph of globalization over COVID-19.

Jerome H. Kim is director-general of the International Vaccine Institute.

Fast, transparent action behind COVID-19 control

I will discuss with you the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in China and our prevention and control strategies.

It only took around three weeks from the discovery of the epidemic to the lockdown of Wuhan. It only took a week to isolate the virus after we identified the epidemic. This was the shortest time on record for scientists to recognize a new infectious disease. It took only a few days from the isolation of pathogens to the creation of diagnostic reagents for clinical diagnosis. This was also a record-breaking short time in history.

In about three weeks, we determined the main modes of transmission of this pneumonia of unknown etiology and the average incubation period. These four scientific discoveries-virus isolation, genome sequencing, average incubation period, and main modes of transmission-laid a scientific foundation for our country to formulate the prevention and control strategies of COVID-19, which were also the most important contributions made by Chinese scientists to mankind.

In the first three weeks of the epidemic, China's response to it was scientific, timely and transparent, and it also laid a scientific foundation for the global control of the pandemic.

A review of China's strategies against COVID-19 reveals several aspects that were very important. The first aspect was the importance of the "four earlies": early detection, early reporting, early isolation and early treatment. These are important strategies in responding to acute infectious diseases.

When dealing with the epidemic, China focused on epidemiological investigations of patients, using reported cases as a source to identify the patient's close contacts.

The third aspect was nucleic acid testing. The fourth effective strategy was to isolate and treat patients in a timely manner, and treatment of patients is free.

Although China has successfully contained the virus, to be honest, we cannot have a turnaround until the global pandemic is under control. Only when China joins hands with countries around the world to control the global pandemic, can we have a safer social environment.

Wu Zunyou is chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Next tech revolution to affect entire world

The so-called new round of technological and industrial revolution is integrating the physical world with the virtual one, producing changes in the economic-social paradigm and bringing the global village envisioned half a century ago almost within reach.

It has brought about a change in the innovation paradigm, presenting a new trend of integrated development of scientific, technological and industrial revolution. A great number of revolutionary technologies are on the eve of major breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, biopharmaceuticals, robotics, quantum technology, advanced materials, the internet of things and others, laying a solid tech foundation for the next round of revolution.

With technological advancements, more challenges from technology itself have emerged. There is much room for technological innovation, as many fields need new research methods and new theories.

Despite rapid progress in AI technology, we also need to be fully aware of the huge energy consumption in the wake of it on the current development stage.

The new round of technological and industrial revolution has not only reshaped the world but also forged a closer bond between technology and humans, thus exerting more and far-reaching influences on human beings.

Take AI and robots as examples to glimpse the ethical and compliance risks. They involve multifaceted risks including privacy, and social risks from biased algorithms and robot use.

The technology we expect is controllable, beneficial to humans' sustainable development and conducive to continuous rise in humans' satisfaction. The aim of the tech revolution is to strike a balance between technological development and risk control.

The key is to create a greater sci-tech ecosystem through cooperation among different countries and regions, disciplines and sectors, as well as different steps along the technology chain.

The cooperation among different countries and regions, disciplines and sectors, as well as different steps along the technology chain is key to addressing the challenges of technology itself.

Huang Ru is a vice-president of Peking University and academician of Chinese Academy of Science.


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