On May 29, the Interna-tional Financial Forum (IFF) 2021 Spring Meet-ing commenced in Beijing.The theme of this conference is “The post-pandemic era: global governance and international cooperation”. The opening ceremony was presided over by Gao Yan, Chairperson of the CCPIT.Join hands to tackle challengesZhou X iaochuan, President of the IFF conference and Deputy Chairman of the 12th CPPCC, said in his opening speech that amidst the global spread of the COVID-19 pan-demic and unforeseen global changes in the last century, people’s living and development have been facingsevere challenges. This year’s confer-ence focuses on global governance and international cooperation in the post-pandemic era. He said that due to the impact of the COVID-19 pan-demic, debt risks of some developing countries have increased. Last year the G20 proposed to postpone debt repayment of the most impoverished countries and establish a common framework for the arrangement of outstanding debt, to alleviate debt problems caused by the COV ID-19 pandemic. China has allocated more than USD 1.3 billion in debt relief, making it the largest country among G20 countries in terms of the amount of debt relief. At the moment, Chi-na is speeding up the construction of a new development pattern withdomestic circulation as the main-stay and domestic and international circulations promoting each other. China will continue to be the “world factory” and “world market”, and ex-pand its opening-up while increasing domestic demand. China’s sustained development and opening-up will aid the recovery of the world economy.UN secretary-general António Guterres said that the COV ID-19 pandemic has subverted people’s lives and affected the process of achiev-ing sustainable development goals in 2030. In order to effectively cope with the impact of the pandemic, it is imperative to narrow the gap in glob-al vaccine inoculation and provide more support to developing countrieson the verge of debt crisis. DevelopedBy Lily WangSolidarity Is Crucial to Revivethe Global Economy28countries should fulfill their commit-ment of aid and climate financing, promote the early recovery of the world economy, and effectively deal with the global climate crisis.IMF managing Director Kristali-na Georgieva said that world economic recovery has seen dangerous polariza-tion. The global policy-makers shall provide equal opportunities for each person in vaccinations, economic re-covery and future development. China’s efforts to promote global cooperation in fighting the pandemic will be appre-ciated. The IMF has uplifted China’s economic growth forecast to 8.4% and estimated that by 2026, China will contribute more than a quarter of global GDP growth. On top of that, China’s commitment to achieve zero emission by 2026 has demonstrated its respon-sibility as a great country, and reflects the global consensus in this area. De-veloping green infrastructural invest-ment will be conducive to the economic transition bearing in mind climate, and also the promotion of global economic growth and the creation of more jobs.José Manuel Barroso, Chair of the GAV I (Global Alliance for Vac-cines and Immunization) and former Prime Minister of Portugal, said that public health safety is a global public good. All countries shall input more human, commodity, capital and R&D resources to prevent global pandemics in the future. It is important to pro-mote global balance in the distribution of vaccines. Developed countries shall offer support to countries and regions incapable of coping with challenges from the pandemic. Faced with issues like the COV ID-19 pandemic, global climate change and financial stability, the international society shall work to-gether, enhance mutual understanding and trust as well as tackle challenges in the spirit of multilateralism.Hank Paulson, former U.S. Trea-sury Secretary and founder and Chair-man of Paulson Institute, said that the relationship between China and the U.S. is the world’s most import-ant bilateral relation. It is important to avoid conflict and promote sound competition, which caters to the in-terests of both countries. China and the U.S. shall work more closely invices, developing clean technology and studying the methods and measures in the pricing of natural resources.CCPIT Deputy Chairman Chen Jian’an said in an interview that it is im-portant to nurture the Chinese corporate team to engage in global economic gov-ernance. It is also imperative to organize more Chinese companies to deeply en-gage in G20, APEC, BRICS and other business events under the framework of multilateralism, to promote economic globalization towards more openness, inclusiveness, general benefits, balance and a global win-win situation. China’s sustainable development and openness will inject stronger impetus into world economic recovery and growth, and pro-vide more historical opportunities and wider space for the cooperation of the global business community.Fill in the gap in fighting the pandemicIn the face of the severely uneven distribution of vaccines, what shall the world do ? How do we establish and improve the national cooperation mechanism for global public health safety in the future ?Zhang Yuhui, Deputy Direc-tor of the health development re-search center of the National Health Commission, said that although the COVID-19 vaccine has been success-fully developed and many countries have explored effective methods to control the virus, global pandemicprevention and control still face chal-lenges, such as virus mutation, early deregulation in many countries and the uneven distribution of vaccines.Zhang Yuhui said that these challenges reflect the shortcomings of the global health governance mech-anism. The successful control of the pandemic in the next several months will be impossible if there is no im-proved global cooperation.Zhang Yuhui cited the IMF forecast data that in 2020 and 2021, the COV ID-19 pandemic caused a global GDP loss of more than USD 12 trillion. This is almost 6 to 7 times the total loss of all infectious diseases in the past decade.In terms of promoting sustainable health, Ennis Baris, senior global health advisor of the New Development Bank, believes that to build a world community of human health, it is very important to maintain pragmatic cooperation. We shall support the World Health Orga-nization, which plays a key role in the world health.“We need to establish a global platform and mechanism to ensure efficient distribution of vaccines and other public goods,” Ennis Baris said.Zhuang Juzhong, chief econo-mist of the IFF and former deputy chief economist of the Asian Devel-opment Bank, pointed out, “we need a global mechanism to ensure that [vaccine] prices are affordable for29developing countries and sustainable for producers. We need to build joint ventures in developing countries to produce vaccines.”Dong Xiaoping, chief virologist of the China CDC, also said that in addition to vaccines, we should not forget about non-medical interven-tions. For example, people shall work together to ensure hand washing and wearing masks to become the new normal in the post-pandemic era.“We shall work together in both professional, social and governmental fields,” said Dong Xiaoping.Regarding cooperation in inno-vative R&D, Alexander Padillo, Bra-zil congressman and ex-health minis-ter, praised China’s help to Brazil. He said that about 80% vaccines offered to Brazilian people resulted from cooperation between the Chinese government, enterprises and Brazil’s vaccine producers.Zhuang Juzhong believes that in the short and medium term, each country and nation needs to share their own vaccine reserves to help less-developed countries. In the long run, there are some measures that need to be considered to overcome this vaccine gap. For example, it is neces-sary to give up the intellectual prop-erty rights of the COV ID-19 vaccine, at least during this pandemic. In this way, more manufacturers will be able to produce vaccines, and an adequatesupply can reduce the cost of vaccines.At the same time, Zhuang Juzhong stressed that low-income countries need to expand investment in infrastructure and strengthen management. They need more support from multilateral develop-ment financial institutions such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Investment Bank and the Development Bank.In terms of maintaining global health and safety, Han Seung-soo, Co-chairman of the IFF, President of the 56th UN General Assembly and former Prime Minister of South Korea, said that human society was undergoing profound transforma-tion during the fourth industrial revolution. The emergence of the COVID-19 virus at this time enables all countries to apply new technolo-gies and more scientific and effective methods to deal with the pandemic.Jenny Shipley, Director of the IFF and former Prime Minister of New Zealand, also mentioned the ne-cessity of creating a vaccine passport in the future. For example, people without vaccine inoculation shall not be allowed to board certain airline’s flights or enter the border of a country. In this way, more strategies need to be employed until the vaccination rate has reached an effective level globally.Heated discussion on digital currencyDuring the IFF forum, many experts of the industry held heated discussions about digital currency.Yao Qian, Director of the Science and Technology Supervision Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, believes that in the face of digitalization, it is necessary for the central bank to actively innovate ways of the issuance and circulation of legal tender, explore the central bank’s digital currency, optimize the payment func-tion of legal tender, alleviate the impact of private payment instruments, and improve the status of legal tender and the effectiveness of monetary policy. As the Chinese people have become accus-tomed to non-cash payment methods such as Alipay and QQ music, many people no longer carry cash. In fact, third party payment technology hasalready been able to realize the trans-parency of all real-time transactions.However, it has a lso caused problems such as data privacy protec-tion, anonymity, monopoly, regulato-ry transparency and so on.He Ping, Director of the Depart-ment of Finance, School of Economic Management, Tsinghua University, said that central bank digital currency features advanced technology and is able to help the whole economy realize fast digital transformation. However, we still need more top-level design in its application scenario, the coopera-tion with other means of payment, and the position and competition in the international payment system.Nie Qingping, Chairman of China Securities Finance Corporation Ltd., said that virtual currency belongs to securities assets. Only the central bank’s legal digital currency represents a change in payment methods.Yao Qian pointed out that the R&D of the central bank’s digital currency should be considered from many aspects, such as the technical route, whether the operation structure is double-layer or single-layer, wheth-er interest is calculated, the issuance mode, and the smart contract.Take the smart contract as an example. Previously, there was a view that adding smart contracts would af-fect the legal compensation function of flat money. Therefore, it is suggest-ed that the central bank should be cautious about adding smart contracts to digital currency.Yao Qian said that the central bank digital currency research projects carried out by the central banks of Canada, Singapore, Europe and Japan have all realized smart contracts. “The digital currency of the central bank is not a simple simulation of the physical currency. If we want to give full play to the digital advantage, the digital cur-rency of the central bank must move towards smart currency in the future.”In He Ping’s view, intelligent technologies may not be deeply im-plemented in the central bank’s digi-tal currency in the future. Commer-cial banks and third-party paymentMore strategiesneed to be employed until the vaccination rate has reached aneffective level globally.30。
