Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for joint efforts from BRICS member countries, to tackle various challenges which confront global development.
BRICS, a unique trans-continental multilateral forum brings together five major countries; two from Asia – China and India, one each from Eurasia, Russia, Africa – South Africa, and Latin America – Brazil.
Xi said this in his keynote address titled “Keep abreast of the trend of the times to shape a bright future” at the inaugural ceremony of the 14th Summit of the BRICS Business Forum hosted by China.
He observed the world faced drastic changes and pandemics both unseen in a century, saying various security challenges emerged.
According to him, the world economy still faced strong headwinds on its path toward recovery and global development had suffered major setbacks.
“Where is the world headed: Peace or war? Progress or regression? Openness or isolation? Cooperation or confrontation? These are choices of the times that we are confronted with.
“Like rivers keep surging with both calm waters and huge waves, despite changes in the evolving global environment, the historical trend of openness and development will not reverse course.
“Our shared desire to meet challenges together through cooperation will remain as strong as ever. We should stand high and not allow ourselves to be distracted by fleeting clouds.
“We should have keen appreciation of the law governing the advance of history. We should refuse to be led astray by any turn of events or intimidated by any risk.
“We should rise to challenge and forge ahead with resolve toward the goal of building a community with a shared future for mankind,” Xi said.
He underscored the need for solidarity and coordination and joint maintenance of world peace and stability, collective promotion of sustainable global development.
He also urged the BRICS member countries to tackle difficulties collectively, jointly pursue win-win cooperation, jointly expand openness and integration as strategies.
Xi said although domestic and international environment challenges characterised 2022, China took coordinated steps in response to COVID-19 and pursued economic and social development.
“Putting the people and their lives first, we have protected people’s lives and health and ensured overall stable performance in economic and social development to the maximum extent possible.
“We will step up macroeconomic policy adjustment and adopt more forceful measures to deliver economic and social development goals for the whole year.
“In the second half of this year, the Communist Party of China will convene its 20th National Congress, which will chart the course for the next phase of China’s development.
“We will ground our efforts in the new development stage, follow new development-philosophy, foster new development-paradigm and strive to achieve high-quality development.
“China will continue to pursue opening-up against higher standards, develop new systems for a higher-standard open economy, foster a market and law-based and internationalized business environment,” he added.
The President commended BRICS cooperation to have entered a new stage of high-quality development and expressed the hope that business leaders would act with tenacity to lead innovative and shared development.
The ceremony was attended online by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that over 1,000 economic and trade ministers, envoys to China and representatives from the business community attended the ceremony.
