By Chinese Consul General in Lagos, Chao Xiaoliang
The G20 summit will be held on September 4th -5th, 2016 in a beautiful southeast city Hangzhou, China. It is also the first ever G20 summit to be hosted in China. The leaders of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Chad, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Laos, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Thailand，Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, United Nations, the European Union, IMF, World Bank and WTO, etc. will attend the summit. With the highly-expected event approaching, China has got everything ready to welcome its most distinguished guests and partner with all other parties to work out a solution that can lead the world out of the dark tunnel of mired economy.
Since 2008, the world has never been fully recovered from the global financial crisis, and even worse, falling oil and commodity price since 2014 has given a heavy blow to some developing country such as Nigeria. The mediocre economy features rising unemployment, soaring debt, sluggish trade and investment and turbulent financial and commodity markets. Many countries, including both developed and developing countries, resort their solutions to the fiscal stimulus and monetary easing, which to some extent is working but with serious side-effect. For some developing countries, the use of fiscal policies is severely constrained by their high debt level. Added to the already complicated global political and economic situation, Brexit, trade protectionism and terrorism are exacerbating the problem. Now, the world is calling for an effective solution.
Accounting for two thirds of the world’s population and more than 80 percent of global economic output, G20 nations deserve, and are expected, to play a bigger role in managing the world economy. The upcoming summit is undoubtedly a prime opportunity, and has the potential to play a significant role in the rebooting of global growth. The focus of the summit will be sustained global growth. As the host nation, China will use the conference to spur dialogue among developed and developing countries around the potential to foster growth through reforms and innovation.
The G20 summit will also have some reference for the economic development of Nigeria. China and Nigeria share so many similarities, we are both largest economies and populous countries in our respective regions. As developing countries, the difficulties we meet in the process of development are quite similar. With the absorption of Chinese wisdom, the solution proposed by G20 summit will be of reference significance for all developing countries including Nigeria. The G20 summit also offers a golden opportunity to express voices from developing countries. As one of China’s most important partners in Africa, Nigeria’s voice and opinions would be carefully listened to and cherished by China. China will announce concerns and proposals in the summit on behalf of developing countries including Nigeria.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping said: “We should strive to build an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive global economy and explore new ways to drive development and structural reform, injecting impetus into the growth of individual countries and energizing the global economy, We should embrace the vision of a global community of shared future, enhance economic connectivity and exchanges among countries and improve global economic and financial governance so as to address inequality and imbalance in global development and ensure that the benefits of economic growth will be equitably shared by people of all countries.” The summit offers a new starting position. However, the journey will be fraught with obstacles. To successfully address low growth, nations must put their faith in cooperation, implementation and, sometimes, painful reforms. Although, perhaps, a bitter pill to swallow, the results will speak for themselves.
