Confronted with profound changes in the world, the times, and history, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) proposed in its Human Development Report 2021/22 that it is necessary to focus on investment, insurance, and innovation, to push the world out of today’s predicaments and to sail towards a more hopeful future.

At the General Debate of the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the Global Development Initiative (GDI) for the first time. He emphasized that global sustainable development should be guaranteed by innovation.

Within just one year, more than 100 countries and many international organizations, including the United Nations (UN), have supported the initiative and more than 60 countries have joined the Group of Friends of the GDI.

Guarding against short-term crises

From the global financial crisis in 2008, the decline in global commodity prices in 2014, to the global economic and trade frictions provoked by the Trump Administration, on to the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, global sustainable development has been continuously impacted. As China’s response to crises, the GDI provides stability and guarantee factors for the sustainable development.

The primary challenge facing sustainable development is the setback rather than the progress that occurs in the aftermath of shocks. However, the larger crisis of sustainable development lies in the significant erosion of the global consensus on solidarity.

Humanity is entering a new geological era, the Anthropocene, wherein humans have become the dominant force shaping the future of the planet. A major priority of the Anthropocene is to strengthen international solidarity.

Mitigating medium-term risks

As China’s solution to mitigate risks, the GDI can inject visible certainty into the management of risks.

Although the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has been unanimously welcomed by the international community, its implementation has clearly been too slow. What is more serious is that the willingness of major countries to supply international public goods has been significantly reduced, and the supply deficit has expanded substantially.

The GDI adheres to the priority of development, upholds the harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature, focuses on the realization of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, and strives to leave no country behind, injecting strong certainty into resolving medium-term risks facing global sustainable development.

Innovating for long-term growth

Human progress has been largely driven by innovation in overcoming crises. The GDI is a manifestation of Chinese wisdom that promotes development and provides innovative strategic thinking for sustainable development.

The core pursuit of sustainable development is the realization of individual worth and dignity. Since the end of the World War II, the international community has been emphasizing a development model centered on gross domestic production (GDP).

However since the 1970s, GDP-centered development supporters have also recognized this model’s indifference to individual value and dignity, and to the relationship between people and the outside world.

This has led to the rise of an alternative model with the UNDP’s human-centered development at its core, for which human security is an important conceptual foundation.

Constrained by its level of development, the concept of human security initially focused only on freedom from fear and deficiency, focusing on physical and material security.

As development progresses, basic survival is no longer difficult, and human beings have begun to think more about the quality of survival and living.

Personal value and dignity have therefore been officially put on the agenda. Thus, the UN has added “psychological or identity security,” or “freedom from humiliation,” to the concept of human security, emphasizing that human security includes the right of people to live in freedom and dignity and to be free from poverty and despair.

The fundamental way to realize personal value and dignity is to encourage and even safeguard the diversity of development. For a long time, the West has tried to impose unity on the entire world through globalization, prescribing “modernization” to the vast number of developing countries with priority for security and governance.

In fact, it is these “prescriptions” that trap the latter in the cycle of “underdevelopment.” The underlying logic lies in trying to induce developing countries to invest limited resources mainly in security and governance sectors that do not have reproductive capacity, resulting in extremely limited resources for reproductive development sectors and making it difficult to form a virtuous circle of development, security, and governance.

In contrast to the Western approach to “modernization,” China has prioritized development and achieved a virtuous circle of development, stability and reform.

This approach contributes historically significant Chinese modernization to humanity.

The GDI adheres to a people-centered philosophy, inclusiveness, and an innovation-driven approach, providing innovative thinking based on China’s experience for the exploration of global sustainable development.

Zhang Chun is a research fellow at the Center for African Studies at Yunnan University.