The first high-level conference of the Forum on Global Action for Shared Development, hosted by the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA), opened in Beijing on Monday.
Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, announced at the forum that China will take action in six areas to promote global development: supporting the development priority agenda, optimizing the cultivation of development projects, breaking the bottleneck of development financing, expanding development cooperation methods, strengthening tripartite development cooperation, and supporting youth to lead development.
Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, delivers a speech at the Forum on Global Action for Shared Development in Beijing, July 10, 2023. /CGTN
Wang noted that China has always placed its own development in the coordinate system of human development, creating new opportunities for the development of the world with its own development. China will further increase resource input for global development cooperation. He also emphasized that China is the largest developing country in the world and a member of the Global South, and the country will stand firmly with the vast number of countries in the Global South.
The Global Development Initiative (GDI) has received support from over 100 countries and the UN since it was proposed in 2021. The goal of the GDI is to tackle two major issues, namely project selection and fund support.
Strengthening third-party development cooperation has proved that the GDI is an open platform. The conference announced China's cooperation with Switzerland on malaria prevention and control in Tanzania, with Germany on agriculture in Nigeria, and with the Bill & Gates Foundation on malaria prevention and control in countries in need.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare delivers a keynote speech at the Forum on Global Action for Shared Development in Beijing, July 10, 2023. /CGTN
Speaking at the forum, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, who is on an official visit to China, highly appreciated the China-proposed GDI in transforming countries' potential for prosperity. Sogavare further noted that we need to transcend the idea of using ideology and geopolitics to divide the world, stay united, and keep exploring creative cooperation roads to narrow the gap between the rich and poor.
The first high-level conference of the Forum on Global Action for Shared Development opened in Beijing, July 10, 2023. /Xinhua
Themed "Global Development Initiative: Echo the Development Agenda and Call for Global Action", the forum gathered government officials, diplomats and experts to discuss the importance of the GDI, amid the growing global calls for narrowing the gap between developing and developed countries and how countries can work together and better reach the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Nikolai Snopkov and Lao Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Saleumxay Kommasith attended the meeting and delivered speeches either online or offline.