GAUTAM MUKHERJEE
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who delivered the key-note address at the snow-clad Davos 2017, located near Zürich, Switzerland, was the first supreme Chinese leader to grace the mountain meets 47-year history. Formally known as the 47th World Economic Forum at Davos, this event is attended annually by global political, financial, and corporate elite, and generally, sets the economic themes for the coming year.
In his hour-long address, Xi, while pointedly attempting to step into the vacuum created by the vigorously protectionist views of the incoming Trump Administration, audaciously chose to sing a song for globalism. This, in the backdrop of a rapidly closing gap between the US and Russia in the Trump presidency.
That there was hardly anyone from the Trump camp (all were busy with the presidential inauguration on January 20), in Davos was seen probably by the Chinese as an opportunity not to be missed. In fact, outgoing US Vice President Joe Biden chose to dwell on Russia and its allegedly less than salubrious new Cold War motivations. He said, “Russia was attempting to put the clock back.”
This set of piece from the outgoing Obama Administration ignores the fact that there is bonhomie and a meeting of minds, not animosity, between incoming US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But coming from Xi, with his own militarist background in the People’s Liberation Army, and China’s ruthless hegemonistic policies, ‘globalism’, is both, a difficult fit and a hard sell.
China brooks no opposition in restive Tibet and Xinjiang. Its land hunger and sabre-rattling on the borders with India is palpable. Its virtual capture and subjugation of Pakistan through the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor and military cooperation, is blatant.
With its own massive militarisation and aggressive foreign investments, particularly infrastructure, China follows a predatory initiative in its entire geopolitical neighbourhood. It does not like reaching out to Taiwan or indeed the Dalai Lama, and refuses to accept international advice on its militarisation and occupation of strategic points in the South China Sea.
Of late, caught up in a dangerous and belligerent hubris, it is also not above challenging the US for top billing. It frequently warns the US on various matters, unofficially, through its media mouth-pieces. So, coming from Xi, the word ‘globalism’ does not seem benign and avuncular at all.
However, the world is hungry for a saviour and appreciates a rich contender wanting to take up the challenge. And like all countries that have clawed their way into the reckoning, there comes a time when it needs to take a broader view.
Unfazed by realities of the past and present, as the world watched, Xi spoke feelingly in favour of globalism. He held it blameless for the West’s recent economic ills since the partial implosion of 2008. Instead, he attributed it mildly to the pursuit of ‘excessive profit’. This implies, growing disparities between rich and poor notwithstanding, that it was still good and valid.
Various speakers, who spoke after Xi, also pointed out that a few multi-billionaires held as much of the world’s wealth as hundreds of millions in poverty, and how such disparities must be reduced. But this kind of talk is something of a cliché in opulent and expensive Davos. It happens to be heard almost every year.
Striking a discordant note to Xi’s hypnotic vision of globalism intactica, Christine Lagarde, managing director for the International Monetary Fund, said that with economic possibilities such as they are, not just the poor, but the middle classes were now in crisis.
Also, notwithstanding China’s horrific greenhouse gases and pollution record amounting to a full ‘10 per cent of the human influence on climate change’, according to a recent report, Xi praised initiatives to roll-back its ill-effects. Xi also spoke of keeping open house in China when it came to trade and business, exhorting others, read America, to do likewise.
However, this flies in the face of the opaque Chinese reality of state-owned enterprises, and Chinese media murmurs of raising barriers to defy the Trump Administration. Xi, warming to his theme at snowy Davos, quoted statistics that made it seem as if China was going to buy in or import in trillions of dollars, and only sell in mere billions going forward. How that, improbable as it sounds, was going to save its plummeting annual growth rate, is unclear.
But since China enjoys huge and intractable balance of trade imbalances in its favour with almost all its trading partners, including the US and India, what kind of additional ‘level-playing field’ was Xi seeking?
Was he pleading for things to be left alone as they are, rather than the 35 per cent import duties Trump has been threatening? Brexit in the UK, now being spelt out in terms of ramifications and implementation, a referendum coming up in Italy, and the election of Trump had the high and mighty at Davos wondering about the future.
If there is a take-away even before the last of the limousines draw away after the week-long conference, it is encapsulated in one word: Uncertainty.
(The writer is a freelance writer)