Abstract: Development is the key to solve all problems. The Global Development Initiative proposed by China addresses the development deficit caused by imbalanced development in different countries and regions, the development deficit produced by the polarization between rich and poor within the society and the development deficit between human and nature, and is also a new concept of human rights governance provided by China. Derived from Chinese civilization and experience, this solution and concept encourage the majority of people to share and enjoy the development fruits on the basis of “people-centered” development concept to achieve sustainable green development between human society and nature. 

 

Key words: Global Development Initiative; development deficit; people-centered; green development

 

Human society is in an era of great development, transformation and adjustment in today's world. The increasing deficits in peace, development, security and governance are serious challenges faced by all humanity. What's wrong with the world, and what should we do? Facing the above challenges, development is the passkey to solve all problems.

 

President Xi Jinping first put forward the Global Development Initiative at the General Debate of the 76th Session of UN General Assembly in September 2021. This Initiative takes the "six insist-on" as main contents, including insist on giving priority to development, insist on the concept of people-centered development, insist on inclusive development, insist on innovation-driven development, insist on harmonious coexistence between human and nature, and insist on action-oriented development. From the perspective of human rights protection, this is a new concept of human rights governance provided by China, a Chinese solution targeting at the following three main aspects of development deficit, and is in favor of realizing the right to development of people in all countries and regions.

 

 

Today's human society has created and accumulated enormous material wealth, but the imbalance between economic and material conditions exists not only within countries and regions, but also between countries and regions, and the gap between rich and poor caused by unbalanced development is still growing. 

 

Human rights are indivisible. Taking advantage of its hegemonic position, especially the combination of military hegemony, financial hegemony and discourse hegemony, the United States arbitrarily divides the contents of human rights according to its own needs under the banner of human rights, and creates human rights crises all around the world. As a result, the gap between the North and the South is increasingly widening, while the "peripheral" countries and regions are further "marginalized" and even present the situation of national bankruptcy, military conflicts and uncontrolled violence. The ordinary people of these countries and regions are deeply trapped in economic crises, political turmoil and chaotic public security, and even their life safety is hard to be safeguarded.

 

For example, the United States uses dollars to purchase goods from all over the world, and then harvests the dollar reserves of other countries through tides every 10 to 15 years to allow dollars to flow back to the United States, which suppresses or even deprives the economic and social rights of people in other countries, especially the developing countries. In another example, the United States abused its military hegemony in the name of safeguarding human rights, and made the countries with ancient civilization become war-torn nations, such as Iraq. Currently, 2 million Iraqi children are unable to go to school, and local people’s rights to survival and development are deprived. The United States abused its discourse hegemony to instigate the Color Revolution in the name of safeguarding human rights, incited separatist riots in the name of human rights in French New Caledonia and other places, and proceeded its geopolitical maneuver in the name of protecting the civil and political rights of local people. In fact, the economic, social and cultural rights of local people are restricted, and their human rights are divided or unilaterally utilized.

 

Facts have proven that it’s hard to generate new impetus for world economic growth in the imbalanced international economic structure and global governance system, and the 'beggar-thy-neighbor' development concept. Economic and trade exchanges between different human civilizations have been a long-standing historical phenomenon for thousands of years. History tells us that civilization develops in openness, and nations coexist in integration.

 

China has insisted on building infrastructure, hospitals, schools and real economy in developing countries for a long time. For example, the Chinese medical team has written a moving chapter on the friendship between China and Africa with great and boundless love over the past 60 years. China is building at least 1,000 schools in Iraq. For another example, the cross-border logistics transportation network has covered 13 countries and regions with the opening and operation of the China-Laos Railway, which gives a strong boost to local economic and social development.

 

The building of a "community with a shared future for mankind" promoted by China through the "Belt and Road" Initiative is not to make as new start from scratch, but to achieve strategic alignment and complementary advantages with the aim to build a new type of international relations centered on win-win cooperation, and create the partnership of non-confrontational dialogue and non-aligned companion. For example, the Belt and Road Initiative is a more balanced model of globalization with full participation, in which the differences and divergences in various fields (including politics, economy and culture) are narrowed and eliminated through economic cooperation, cultural exchanges and personnel exchanges. It’s pointed out in the World Bank Research Report that the Belt and Road Initiative is expected to lift 7.6 million people out of extreme poverty and 32 million people out of moderate poverty by 2030.

 

China hopes to build an equal, diverse and inclusive world order through these efforts. The "equal" here is not exclusive and homogeneous, but the equality that appreciates the diversity and integrity of every form of beauty; is not the formal or legal equality, or simply the distributive equality, but the equality in development opportunities and rights. How to reinterpret, explain and achieve equality in the context of globalization is the prerequisite and foundation for eliminating the development deficit, and is also one of China's important contributions to pushing the solution of the development deficit challenge commonly faced by all humanity.

 

 

The foundation of human rights lies in human beings, and all men are created equal. Human’s right to development includes the improvements in both material life and spiritual life, with human as the main body and their well-being as the starting point. The material and human resources at independent disposal of human society must serve the long-term interests of the vast majority of social members in different countries and regions, rather than the short-term interests of a few people. That is to say, we must insist on the people-centered development concept.

 

There are disadvantaged group in whether the developing countries (regions) or the developed countries (regions) in the wave of economic globalization, and these disadvantaged group often are the ordinary people unable to participate in international economic activities, such as the unskilled blue-collar workers. The issues of poverty, unemployment and widening income gap are becoming increasingly serious around the world, and the polarization caused by unreasonable distribution of personal wealth and income within society is intensified. The very few people owning the vast majority of resources pursue for ever-expanding wealth, as a result, some of the labor forces are required to overtax their jobs while some of the labor forces are excluded from the job market for a long term. The differentiation "between mental-workers-and-physicals-workers" and "consumers-and-the poor" has been intensified, and the logic of capital has generated human alienation, differentiation and atomization. The poor are in great survival dilemma and the social nature of human beings is constantly shrinking.

 

At the opening ceremony of the 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council held in Geneva, Guterres (the UN Secretary-General) said that global poverty and hunger had been worsened for the first time in decades. In 2023, 339 million people in the world would need humanitarian assistance, an increase of 25% over 2022. Instead of moving forward, this world is regressing, which constitutes the second important aspect of the development deficit challenge faced by human society today.

 

To resolve development deficit through development, it is necessary to "insist on fairness and inclusiveness, and create a balanced and inclusive development model" in which development is more balanced, development opportunities are more equal and development fruits are shared with everyone. We must perfect development concepts and models to enhance fair, effective and synergetic development.

 

Therefore, it is necessary to “take good care of the concerns of vulnerable groups to promote social fairness and justice" in the process of dealing with the relation between growth and distribution. It’s necessary to advocate the social climate of diligence, frugality and hard work so that everyone's labor achievements are respected in the process of dealing with the relation between labor and capital. It’s necessary to "emphasize efficiency and fairness to allow people from different countries, classes, and populations to share the benefits of economic globalization" in the process of dealing with the relation between efficiency and fairness. That is to say, it is necessary to enable different members of the society to participate in the "win-win and shared" development without being constrained by the logic of power and capital, and the fruits of development benefit the majority of the global population.

 

The people-centered development concept is derived from Chinese experience, such as the comprehensive social participation and development of Chinese workers. A large number of workers, farmers and intellectuals from all walks of life and all ethnic groups across the country have become model workers. Not only making extraordinary achievements in ordinary jobs, they are also the creators of material civilization and spiritual civilization, the model leaders of people, and the important forces for promoting social development and progress. Moreover, they are important source for training cadres, or serve as party representatives, people's congresses and CPPCC members at all levels, which has greatly enhanced the opportunities and capabilities of Chinese people from ordinary families to participate in and lead politics, fully presented the popular and democratic nature of Chinese politics, and showed that the Chinese modernization road guarantees the universal political, economic and social participation of the vast majority of Chinese people.

 

For another example, the development of poverty alleviation in China. Eliminating absolute poverty is a great feat in the history of human poverty reduction, the most vivid interpretation of human rights concept with the Chinese characteristic that regards the right to survival and development as the primary basic human rights, and also a development miracle in the history of world human rights.

 

For another example, the cause of women's development in China. At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the illiteracy rate was as high as 80% and the actual rate of enrollment for primary school was less than 20% among the 540 million people in the country. Affected by the traditional belief that "an unaccomplished woman is a virtuous woman", the inability to afford school due to family poverty and many other factors, the illiteracy rate among women in the country was over 90%. Today, the total proportion of female students in Chinese universities has exceeded half of total university students in recent years in contrary to the fact of "more male than female" in China's population, which fully demonstrates the development and progress of Chinese women in both material and spiritual civilizations.

 

 

With the pursuit of material wealth and capital increment as its logical starting point, the modernization process of “capital-centered” modernization is essentially a path of military conquest, economic plunder and cultural colonization. This path unilaterally emphasizes the scale and speed of economic development and makes unprecedented large-scale excavation and use of natural resources, causing irreparable ecological trauma to the environment.

 

Under the logic of capital, the wave of industrialization and urbanization has nourished the lifestyle of consumerism, and economic globalization has driven increasingly inflated consumption for private wants. However, the limited earth resources, especially natural resources, are unable to support unlimited production and consumption. For example, global climate change, soil pollution from pesticides and fertilizers and water pollution have highlighted this un-sustainability, which forms the third important aspect of development deficit challenge faced by human society.

 

The tension between unlimited human needs and limited natural resources objectively requires humans to reflect on the relationship between human and nature. The Global Development Initiative calls for perfecting global environmental governance, making active response to climate change, building the life community of human and nature, and accelerating green and low-carbon transformation to achieve green recovery and development.

 

The Global Development Initiative aims to shift the development concept from “development for the sake of development” to “people-centered sustainable development”. Although human beings can utilize and transform nature, we are a part of nature and shall take good care of instead of dominating it. Following the people-centered development concept, it is necessary to handle the structural contradictions between "unlimited expansion of production", "unlimited consumption" and "limited storage of resources", and the relationship between current economic development goal and future economic growth potential as well as current people's well-being and the benefits of future generations. That is to say, instead of "squandering the wealth from our ancestors and cutting off the path of our descendants, and promoting development in a destructive way," the development deficit should be resolved from two dimensions, human and nature, and present and future.

 

The revolution in development concept brought by the green development concept is proposed to seek the path of sustainable development of human society on the basis of summarizing the development concept being accumulated in thousands of years of Chinese civilization that the laws of nature govern all things and men shall seek harmony with nature, and the experience and lessons learned from China's development in recent decades. This development concept requires the sense of mission that benefits the future of humanity from global perspective, requires to protect ecological environment and gradually shift the pursuit for scale to quality, effective and reasonable use of current natural resources and renewable utilization of energy on the basis of meeting future needs, so as to realize coordinated economic, social and environmental development, the integrative and organic operation of human and nature as well as human and society.

 

The concept of green development is not only expressed in achieving harmonious development between humans and nature through sustainable development, but also in the sustainability of multi-channel participation of the general public in green development to promote the sustainable development of society and culture and harmonious development between people. Moreover, it reflects the characteristics of the integrated development of nature, ecology, society, humanities and economy, and the harmonious development of past history, present and future to achieve a higher level of global sustainable development.

 

Breaking through the outdated framework of binary opposition between economic development and ecological environment protection, the concept of green development emphasizes the dialectical unity between "golden and silver mountains" and "green waters and mountains" to seek development in protection and enhance protection in development. Exploring the modes to achieve sustainable development in society, economy and nature guides the path to realize green development, which not only enables to obtain the supply of natural resources that sustain the green development, but also avoid potential environmental hazards. Sustainable green development not only meets the expanding material and cultural needs of the people on the basis of adhering to the people-centered principle, but also protects the "green mountains and waters", views beautiful environment as valuable wealth and important livelihood issue and regards limited energy and resources as the best savings for humanity.

 

Different countries and regions and their peoples not only enjoy the right to development, but also enjoy equal right to development. It’s recommended to reflect on the reasons behind the current world development deficit to resolve the development deficit. It requires all countries, regions and individuals to consider their own interests at a broader level to resolve the development deficit, and not harm the interests of other countries, regions and individuals as the cost for developing themselves. In order to resolve the development deficit, it’s necessary to promote win-win and shared development, release the development potential of different countries and regions and strengthen their development linkage, and encourage the majority of people to enjoy and share the development fruits based on the “people-centered” development concept so as to achieve sustainable green development between human society and the natural world.

 

(The author is director of the Social and Cultural Department of the American Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)