BEIJING: The vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, has proved to be a significant global contribution, and the past 10 years have shown how important it is, according to observers in the United States.
“Xi Jinping’s idea of interconnectedness and building a shared future was at the time, and is now, a revolutionary idea about world affairs,” said Jack Midgley, principal of the global consultancy Midgley &Co and an adjunct associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University.
Midgley said there is a “very fundamental difference” between Xi’s vision of a shared future, which emphasizes understanding and shared institution-building, and the prevailing US idea of building a future through competition, which is based on “success in competition”.
“The shared future idea appeals to people at the top of the economic and cultural spectrum, and at the bottom, people can aspire. The idea of building a future through competition leaves much of the world behind,” Midgley told China Daily.
Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies, told China Daily that the idea of a shared future was an important contribution made by President Xi, and it held great expectations for the potential of US-China cooperation.
Gupta said, “If one of the parties is unwilling to clap, one cannot clap. This is the sad reality of how geopolitics is at this point in time and where US-China relations stand.”
“But it is an important idea to …keep in mind the interconnectedness of countries and the shared future that each of these countries exists and operates in,” he added. “Because at the heart of this shared future is also the sense of United Nations-centeredness.”
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
