Chairman Jiang Zengwei’s article was published on page 10 of the People’s Daily, June 14, 2016. The full article is as follows:
Work with Global Business Circle for Better World Economic Growth
By Jiang Zengwei
The G20 Summit and B20 Summit will be held concurrently in Hangzhou, China in September, 2016. Chinese President Xi Jinping will be present at the opening ceremony of the B20 summit and deliver a keynote speech. Leaders of G20 member countries will attend the B20 summit plenary session and make deep communications with representatives of the commercial industry.
The global commercial industry plays a leading role in the promotion of world economic development and fostering new points of growth. It has been working with the governments of the world for a long time to meet economic challenges and support the development of the world economy. B20 Summit is a salutary mechanism that takes shape during the world financial crisis in 2010, which is an important part of the G20 framework. Also as a significant platform for the global commercial industry to involve in world economic governance and promote economic growth, the B20 summit will convey the commercial industry’s recommendations on world economic development and administration to the G20 meeting, and make contributions to the sustainable and balanced growth of the world economy. Each year, B20 will set up special taskforces to discuss pivotal topics concerned by the global commercial industry. Taskforce meetings will be held with the summit to accumulate opinions, reach consensus and submit policy recommendation report to G20 leaders for reference.
Since its foundation, B20's topics have become more focused, the discussion increasingly deeper and the influence more profound. The B20 focus has covered financial system reform, trade, investment, energy, infrastructure, employment, finance and anti-corruption and until now it has submitted to the G20 Summit more than 400 policy recommendations, many of which have been incorporated into G20 summit communiqué. These policy recommendations have attracted high attention of G20 leaders, as they are comprehensive and focused, combining farsightedness and feasibility. The recommendations have played a positive role and created deep influence in the promotion of world economic recovery, acceleration of global financial system reform, exploration of economic development model, safeguarding multilateral trade mechanism, enhancement of trade and investment facilitation, prevention of trade protectionism and increase of infrastructural investment.
Currently the momentum for world economic recovery is still weak and the long-term structural conflicts have not been solved. The new driving engine for economic growth has not taken shape and great discrepancies have been seen in the policies of major economies. International trade growth has slowed down and cross-border investment has not recovered to pre-crisis level. These issues shall be coped with by all countries in the world. As a player benefiting from the global economic development, the commercial industry shall play to its unique strength, open up research and communication, and initiate policy suggestions to explore new path, momentum and space of world economic growth.
China has taken over the right to host 2016 B20 Summit at his crucial moment. As organizer of the event, the CCPIT has set up 2016 B20 organizing committee and opened up the launching ceremony on Jan. 26, 2016. Now B20 preparation work has been under way smoothly.
We stick to the theme of 2016 G20 Summit, which is “the creation of innovative, energetic, connected and inclusive world economy”, and have designed the B20 topics that highlight innovation and future development. By combining the work achievements of previous B20 meetings and broad suggestions from international industrial community, institutions and groups, this meeting will set up six taskforces including finance-driven growth, trade & investment, infrastructure, small and medium-sized enterprise development, employment and anti-corruption. These taskforces fit well with heated topics of the world economy and reflect the concerns of the world commercial industry. They are highly compatible with the four key topics of G20 summit, including “innovative growth model, more efficient global economic and financial governance, robust international trade and investment and inclusive and connected development”, which are focused and characteristic of the era.
Accumulate talents of global commercial industry and establish efficient working team. To promote discussions of the B20 taskforces, we have established five working groups including financial-driven growth, trade & investment, infrastructure and small and medium-sized enterprise development, and an anti-corruption forum. More than 500 representatives from global enterprises, business associations, international organizations and think tanks have joined the taskforce working group, 32 leaders from international commercial industry have taken the positions of chairmanship and co-chairmanship of the working groups. Some famous international organizations and consulting firms have become partners of the working group. To ensure the continuity of the taskforce discussion, we also set up a B20 international cooperation committee that includes coordinators from last, this and next B20 summit and experts of both China and foreign countries. Members of the 2016 B20 taskforce working group have rich international cooperation experiences and these members include leaders of the commercial and financial industry, representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises, and famous professional expert.
Stick to the concept of inclusiveness and openness, conduct business discussions. Since the launching ceremony of the B20 Summit, we have conducted comprehensive discussion and research and organized B20 Taskforce Group Meetings in Washington D.C. And Paris, the Anti-corruption Forum and the 19thTaskforce Working Group Joint Meeting in Beijing. about 2,150 people have participated into the discussion. We have also organized 14 discussion meetings at Davos World Economic Forum, Boao Asia Forum and other international platforms, with about 1,500 representatives from G20 member business associations, research institute, famous enterprises and international organizations attended the discussions. We have organized taskforce working group members to attend 12 G20 working group meetings and coordinator meetings, to make good interactions with G20 topic discussions. We have also started various forms of communications and accumulated valuable opinions and suggestions from a wide range of social community to lay a solid foundation for 2016 B20 Summit. Our work has achieved high recognition by the international commercial industry.
Accumulate opinions from all sides to form policy recommendation report. The main task of this B20 Summit is to form a policy recommendation report that focuses on world economic issues, has unique perspectives and meets expectations of all sides. We have summarized and analyzed policy suggestions of the international commercial industry and formulated the framework of B20 policy recommendation report, which will focuses on the six taskforces of B20 summit and proposed 20 policy recommendations including encouragement of green finance, optimization of cross-border e-commerce development environment, facilitation of global trade and investment, promotion of the application of innovated methods in infrastructural projects, promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises to integrate into global value chain, raising employment rate of young people and women and the increase of business environment transparency. These policy suggestions are focused and feasible, combining innovation and professionalism, the short-term solutions and long-term and sustainable effects. Therefore these suggestions will be very important references for policy making.
B20 Summit is an important event of G20 summit. We will further enhance communications with global commercial industries and revise the final draft of the B20 policy recommendation report, to submit a high-standard, high-quality and high-level report to G20 leaders. We will also use G20 official working platform and St. Petersburg international economic forum, to promote the report contents to world governments, business associations, enterprises and international organizations. The aim is to include more B20 policy recommendations into the G20 summit communiqué.
We will work closely with all parties by international standard, to smoothen the meeting preparation work, including guest invitation, meeting agenda setting, logistics and volunteer service, to make 2016 B20 a successful business event.
We also welcome all guests from world commercial industry to visit Hangzhou in the coming September to discuss world economic development and create a better future.
