Children at a school in a village of Maputo province, Mozambique, stand in front of a house equipped with a China-aided satellite TV antenna, on July 25, 2023. (PHOTO: XINHUA)

Edited by Staff Reporters

The world is facing severe challenges in global development, standing at the crossroads of the future and the destiny of humanity. President Xi Jinping proposed the Global Development Initiative (GDI) in 2021, with the aim of promoting more robust, greener and healthier global development. 

On September 19, on the second anniversary of the launch of GDI, China held a high-level meeting to showcase the cooperation results of GDI at the UN Headquarters in New York, demonstrating its determination to promote the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Since its proposal, the initiative has garnered widespread response and achieved many accomplishments.

Through more than 30 cases of international cooperation projects, GDI shows how China and the international community are collaborating to pioneer a new model of international development cooperation, according to a report released at the high-level meeting on GDI Cooperation Outcomes.

In September 2022, China set up GDI project pool and released the first list of global development projects covering multiple areas such as poverty reduction, food security and industrialization. Over 10 of these projects have already been completed, while the remaining projects are progressing vigorously. 

The GDI brings substantial changes and tangible hope to the global community by taking concrete actions, such as providing technical assistance in cultivating mycorrhizal fungi and upland rice to the Eastern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea; implementing the “East Asia Poverty Reduction Demonstration Cooperation Project” in six impoverished villages in Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia, and distributing food packages to children in poor communities in Nepal.

For people in developing countries, it is challenging to improving their life quality while making their lifestyles “greener.” In June of this year, a China-aided solar energy demonstration village project in Mali passed completion inspection. Tens of thousands of local residents benefited from this project, with a total of 1,195 off-grid solar home systems, 200 solar street lighting systems, 17 solar water pump systems, and two centralized solar power supply systems installed. 

Various parties have expressed their support and approval for GDI through bilateral and multilateral mechanisms. Currently, more than 100 countries and international organizations support GDI, and over 70 countries have joined the Group of Friends of GDI. 

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that China-proposed GDI aligns with the UN’s 2030 Agenda and that China’s efforts in their common development goals are unparalleled.  

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif believed that the GDI calls on the international community to prioritize development, and responds to the international community’s concerns about people’s livelihood and development, providing a realistic path for countries to coexist harmoniously and seek common development. 

The GDI is based on China's own development experience and solves global development problems, which is of great practical significance to global development, said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Chairman of the Kuhn Foundation. 

Chinese firms operating in Africa contributed over 20 percent to the continent's economic development in the last decade, according to Cavince Adhere, a Kenya-based international relations scholar. 

Xulio Rios, director of the Observatory of Chinese Politics in Spain told Xinhua that China's great contribution to global development is reflected not only in its own development, but also in sharing development experience with other countries and assuming global responsibilities, hailing China's development experience as the common wealth of all mankind, which is particularly important to the countries in the Global South.

Development is the eternal pursuit of human society. Looking ahead, building a community with a shared future for mankind relies on uniting as one and working together through consultation.