how China can play a leading role in the post-2015 agenda
3 China’s participation: advantages and disadvantages
Despite its significant advantages, China’s participation in the discussion of the post-2015 agenda has been fairly moderate while internationally such an effort is increasingly heating up. China can claim at least two very important advantages in participating in the discussion: On the one hand, as most observers have pointed out, the great success of the MDGs has to a very large extent been because of China’s achievements. Generally speaking, China has made great progress in economic and social development and other areas in the past 20 years. China has already met seven targets under
the MDGs ahead of schedule. China’s human development index (HDI) saw a rapid growth from 0.495 in 1990 to 0.699 in 2012, higher than the world average of 0.694 (MOFA / UNDP 2013, 9).
On the other hand, China has a rich experience in the building of global partnerships for the implementation of the MDGs, especially with Africa.
As a developing country, China is not bound by the obligation (prescribed by Goal 8) of assisting other developing countries. Nevertheless, China has always regarded strengthening cooperation with other developing countries as a cornerstone of its foreign policy. China’s involvement in South-South cooperation takes various forms and covers a wide range of fields, such as trade, investment and development cooperation, and constitutes an important part of the global South-South cooperation. Since 2000, while being dedicated to achieving the MDGs domestically, China has striven to provide assistance to more than 120 developing countries within the South-South cooperation framework, so as to help them improve their capacity for independent development to achieve the MDGs. Assistance has been delivered in many ways, such as construction of infrastructure, agricultural and industrial projects, provision of various goods and equipment, dispatching experts for technical cooperation, medical teams and volunteers, offering emergency humanitarian assistance, holding human resources trainings and so on. From 2000 to 2012, China has provided more than RMB 250 billion in aid to foreign countries (MOFAS / UNDP 2013, 51). The ‘best practice’
example of this effort is the cooperation between China and Africa under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in the field of the MDGs (Zhang 2013, 27–44).
Without a sense of urgency, China has not pro-actively participated in the discussions about the post-2015 agenda. Generally speaking, a strange trend exists, namely that China lays importance on this issue at the strategic level while ignoring it at the operational level.
Strategically, China has always attached great importance to international development, especially the building of the post-2015 agenda. The Chinese government has issued several documents in this regard. At the 5th FOCAC ministerial conference in July 2012, the Beijing Declaration calls on
the international community to, under the leading role of the UN, take seriously the inefficient implementation in the field of sustainable development, show the political will and commitment to build consensus, and reach agreement on the implementation plan of the post-MDG
Chun Zhang
German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)
32
framework of sustainable development. We also urge the developed countries to honor their assistance commitments to developing countries, African countries in particular (FOCAC 2013).
As an inward-looking event, the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress in November 2012, advocates establishing ‘a new type of global development partnership that is more equitable and balanced’, a concept proposed even earlier and more comprehensive than the concept of
‘new global partnership’ advocated by the United Nations for the post-2015 agenda.
At the BRICS Summit in March 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for
jointly participating in the setting of [the] international development agenda, fully harnessing the productivity and material resources accumulated in the past, fulfilling the UN Millennium Development Goals, narrowing the North-South gap in development, and making global development more balanced (Xi 2013).
Shortly after his speech, the BRICS Summit Declaration confirmed this call collectively. On 22 September 2013, the Chinese government publicised its position paper on the post-2015 agenda (MOFA 2013), a leading action among emerging powers, while still lagging behind most of the developed world.
However, at the operational level, China’s participation is quite slow compared to its policy statements; part of the reason lies in the fact that there are too many urgent challenges ahead while the intergovernmental negotiations of the post-2015 agenda will go on over a while. Such reservation in terms of preparing for the post-2015 agenda has three explanations. Firstly, China is not thinking thoroughly about how to transfer its experience of MDGs implementation into a theory for guiding its future participation. Domestically, China did not develop a comprehensive theory from its successful poverty reduction which it could then contribute to the discussion about the Post-2015 agenda. Internationally, China always limits the cooperation in MDGs to development assistance, not under the framework of global partnership building (MDG 8); and such cooperation is more thought of as bilateral cooperation and not from the perspective of South-South cooperation.
Secondly, the human resource and intellectual contributions for the post-2015 agenda are too limited given the importance of China as an emerging power. The SDSN has only 3 Chinese experts, too few to participate in the discussion of 12 topics; and there was only one Chinese person, Ambassador Wang Yingfan, included in the HLP, with no academic support. Another example: No Chinese transnational company participated in the drafting of the UN Global Compact report for the post-2015 agenda (UNGC 2013). While there were two consultations by UNDP in China, one local consultation in Kunming in December 2013 and another national consultation in Beijing in March 2013, the sponsor for these two events was the Chinese Association of United Nations, a semi-NGO in China, proving the inaction of the Chinese government in this regard.
And, finally, although academic research in China is lagging behind, it to a very great extent welcomes the universality of the SDGs ignoring the potential disadvantages mentioned above.2