GGI reaffirms China as leading defender of peace

By Harald Brüning

WANG XIAOYING/CHINA DAILY

The proposal of another global initiative and the two major international events, held in Tianjin and Beijing in September, have reaffirmed China as a leading proponent of global peace and development.

President Xi Jinping proposed the Global Governance Initiative at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Tianjin on Sept 1. “I look forward to working with all countries for a more just and equitable global governance system and advancing toward a community with a shared future for humanity,” he said.

He also said that while this year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) and the World Anti-Fascist War, and the founding of the United Nations, even 80 years later the “Cold War mentality, hegemonism and protectionism continue to haunt the world”. He added that global governance has reached a new crossroads.

The GGI is based on five core principles: sovereign equality, international rule of law, multilateralism, a people-centered approach, and real actions.

The term “global governance” probably emerged in the mid-1990s, and began to be widely used at the beginning of the 21st century. For instance, the 1996 edition of the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics did not include any entry on “global governance”.

Now, about three decades later, China is one of the main proponents of further developing the concept. As the Foreign Ministry says in the concept paper, the GGI is another major initiative proposed by China, following the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative, and focuses on the direction, principles, and path for reforming the global governance system and institutions.

There is enough reason to believe that the countries of the Global South agree with President Xi’s four global initiatives, and I hope that the Global North, that is, the West, finally gets on board. Even the European Union should think about supporting the four initiatives, because that would help strengthen the EU’s currently rather weak strategic autonomy.

Holding the massive Victory Day parade in Beijing on Sept 3, China pledged its firm commitment to peaceful development in a world still fraught with turbulence and uncertainties. Addressing the grand gathering, President Xi said the Chinese nation’s ongoing rejuvenation was unstoppable.

Noting that the victory in the war of resistance was achieved under a national united front against Japanese aggression advocated by the Communist Party of China, Xi said the Chinese people made a major contribution to the salvation of human civilization and the defense of global peace with immense sacrifices in the war — a significant part of World War II. Unfortunately, China’s important role in defeating militarism and fascism in World War II is still widely ignored, or even downplayed, by the West — which is a shame.

China’s war of resistance against fascist Japan began with the Sept 18 Incident in 1931, eight years before Nazi Germany’s blitzkrieg in Poland. Yet many, including some historians, in the West still think that World War II began in 1939. In an interview with Chinese State media on the sidelines of the SCO Summit, UN Secretary-General António Guterres rightly pointed out the historically significant fact of how World War II erupted. I thank him for that.

For a decade preceding the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan, the Chinese people had been valiantly resisting the Japanese fascist forces. The Chinese people refused to capitulate to the Japanese fascists despite the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and the relentless bombing of the country’s wartime capital, Chongqing.

Many historians have pointed out that China’s grueling resistance bought critical time for the Allied forces to rearm and shatter Japan’s hubristic plan for capturing the whole of China. Japanese military archives show that between 1937 and 1945, some 70-90 percent of the Japanese army’s divisions were committed to the Chinese mainland.

One shudders to think what would have happened if the militaries of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan had been able to meet up in the Caucasus. The fascists would have turned entire countries into “slave states”. Thanks also to the Chinese people’s heroism in World War II, the Holocaust came to an end before the “final solution” could reach its depraved end of exterminating the Jewish people.

Considering that China’s resistance prevented the nightmare scenario from happening, we Europeans, Germans in particular should be grateful to the Chinese people for their valor and sacrifice in the World Anti-Fascist War.

China and the Soviet Union lost the highest number of lives in World War II. Without the sacrifices of these countries, and their allies, Nazi Germany and fascist Japan could have emerged victorious in the war. Lamentably, however, senior European leaders were conspicuous by their absence at the parade in Beijing.

The events in Tianjin and Beijing showed that China has become a leading force for global peace. And since peace should always be defended, China held the military parade to show that the tragedies of the past will not be allowed to happen again.

The author is director of the Macau Post Daily.

China Daily.