On 30 August, the China Daily’s China Watch and its website published a signed article by Ambassador Liu Xiaoming entitled “G20 meeting holds out hope for economic confidence and Impetus”. The full text is as follows:

When leaders of the world’s major emerging and advanced economies meet in Hangzhou for the G20 summit in less than a week, the ground will have been prepared for them to find remedies for the sluggish global economy.

A disappointing recovery, lacklustre growth and slow progress in structural reform are some of the hurdles that still stand in the way of sustainable and balanced growth. Around the world, trade and investment are growing only slowly, and many countries are dogged by uneven development and social inequality. At the same time, geopolitical conflicts, terrorism and the refugee crisis further complicate the prospects of economic advances. All these need to be tackled in a joint global effort.

The G20, as a main platform for global economic and financial governance, has the opportunity to tackle these challenges head on. The world needs clear guidance from Hangzhou. Everyone is looking for strong decisions and enforcement, combined with collective actions for an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive global economy.

Since China assumed the G20 presidency on Dec 1 last year, it has taken its responsibility most seriously and has acted in an open, transparent and inclusive way as consensus is forged and turned it into actions. With the collaboration of all members, the G20 has introduced a number of initiatives and accomplished a series of phased outcomes.

First, the G20 has made a blueprint for innovation-driven growth. This is a result of a special working group on innovation initiated by China and composed of member countries. The blueprint has led to a series of action plans on innovation, the new industrial revolution and the digital economy, which will be submitted for approval during the G20 summit. This will be the first time that the G20 focuses on the mid-to-long term global growth engine. The blueprint and the related action plans have the potential to open up a new path for global growth.

Second, the G20 has taken actions to improve global economic and financial governance. The G20 International Financial Architecture Working Group has been restored and the efforts to build the global financial safety net strengthened. The G20 summit will work out the High-Level Principles on International Fugitive Repatriation and Asset Recovery, and set up a research centre on repatriation and recovery. Also, the summit will call on the IMF to finish quota adjustment at an early date so as to increase the overall share of emerging and developing countries.

Member states have also reached consensus and drafted action plans on infrastructure investment, international taxation, climate change and other issues. All these efforts will help make the global economic governance more balanced, reliable and effective, and help create a more just, reasonable and institutionalised environment for world growth.

Third, the G20 has taken new steps in structural reforms. Finance ministers and central bank governors from G20 member countries have agreed upon some significant issues. These include nine priority areas and 48 principles for structural reforms, together with a system of 12 measurable indicators, such as labour productivity and employment rates, to monitor and assess the progress of reforms. This enables an objective assessment of the overall progress and effect of structural reforms in individual countries as well as better co-ordination and efficiency of the reform actions in different countries. It will help boost growth by not only tackling the symptom but also addressing the root cause.

Fourth, the G20 has made efforts to promote global trade and investment. The G20 has set up institutionalised platforms, such as the Trade Ministers’ Meeting and the Trade and Investment Working Group, and has formulated the Strategy for Global Trade Growth. This strategy contains seven parts, namely, lowering trade costs, harnessing trade and investment policy coherence, boosting trade in services, enhancing trade finance, developing a World Trade Outlook Indicator, promoting e-commerce development, and addressing trade and development.

Specific action plans have been made to support the strategy. Trade ministers have also set out guiding principles for global investment policies, which is the first multilateral guiding document on investment policies. It serves as an important guideline for countries to co-ordinate their domestic investment policy-making and overseas investment negotiations. This means a notable step forward in strengthening multilateral investment policy co-ordination.

Fifth, the G20 will focus on greater investment in the area of development. China is the world’s largest developing country that prioritises the issue of development in global macro-policy framework. China has worked to encourage collective and individual actions within the G20 to support the UN Sustainable Development Agenda. The coming Hangzhou summit will invite more developing countries and have a level of representation of the developing world unprecedented in G20 history.

These preparations, built around this year’s theme, will lay a solid foundation for the G20 Hangzhou summit to achieve fruitful results. In the run-up to the summit, China will continue to work hard to ensure that the phased outcomes will be ratified by G20 leaders and implemented. The summit will endeavour to meet the expectations of the international community by boosting confidence in world economic prospects, generating impetus for global growth and bringing the benefit of economic development to people around the world.

The effective joint response to the global financial crisis in the past has shown clearly that co-ordination and co-operation are the source of strength in face of challenges. Looking to the future, the summit has the opportunity to deliver a summit of vision and real actions. This can be a starting point of a transition from crisis control to long-term governance.

Winston Churchill once said, “Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.” I am confident that the Hangzhou summit will help lead the global economy out of its low ebb and begin a new round of growth and prosperity. It will go down as an important milestone in the history of the G20.

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China Watch is a monthly supplement of Daily Telegraph, which is produced and published by China Daily.