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Academics discuss global impact of COVID-19 pandemic

Author  :  ZHA JIANGUO, XIA LI and CHEN LIAN     Source  :    Chinese Social Sciences Today     2020-05-08

Scholars recently gathered online to analyze multiple aspects of how the COVID-19 pandemic will impact the world.

Held on April 18, the webinar on the “Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on World Politics and Economy and International Relations” was organized by the School of Advanced International and Area Studies (SAIAS) and the Center for Russian Studies at East China Normal University (ECNU).

Yu Hongjun, former vice minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, pointed out that the world’s joint COVID-19 fight has highlighted how human society fundamentally shares a common destiny. However volatile the international situation is, the general historical trend of China going global and the world embracing China will remain unchanged, he said.

This pandemic will radically change the international pattern and the global political landscape, said Zhang Shuhua, director of the Institute of Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He urged accelerating the research, development and application of vaccines, orderly resuming work and production, and releasing proactive, effective fiscal and taxation policies in a timely manner, while coping with the dual risks of de-globalization and world economic recession.

Alexander Libman, a professor from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany, noted that it is too early to judge what long-term impact the COVID-19 pandemic will bring to world politics and European society. Noting that the pandemic is a major test for the European Union, Libman proposed multilateralism as a solution to the crisis.

Currently Europe lacks unified pandemic control policies, and even if the pandemic will be controlled in the future, economic problems will still escalate, threatening the economic development of the entire EU, Libman said. Whether the EU can fulfill its role of maintaining the unity of Europe remains to be seen.

Although the pandemic has dealt world politics and the global economy a heavy blow, it is unlikely to destroy the global economy’s established symbiotic system, said Yao Peisheng, former Chinese ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

Qu Wentie, a professor from the SAIAS, said that the anti-globalization trend has risen amid the pandemic, and the root cause lies in the loss of political trust in the original international labor division system based on economic logic. Given the current international situation, it is urgent that we rebuild trust.

Against the backdrop of calling for international cooperation to combat COVID-19, it is urgent to deeply advance globalization, said Liu Jun, director of the SAIAS.

Wang Haiyan, an associate professor from the SAIAS, said that due to the uncertainties of how wide the coronavirus has spread and how long the pandemic will last, as well as the difficulty in prevention and control, uncertain economic projections by countries around the world might result in prolonged world economic depression, affect China’s logistics pattern and global industrial investment and layout, and in particular hinder the upgrade and improvement of the country’s whole industrial chain system.

China needs to alter the economic growth model driven by foreign trade and construct a global trade system that lays equal emphasis on domestic demand and foreign trade, so as to give cross-border e-commerce more developmental opportunities, Wang said.

 

(Edited and translated by Chen Mirong)

Editor: Yu Hui

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