What Are the Shared Responsibilities of China and the EU in the Post-Pandemic Era?
On Sep 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend a virtual meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel European Council President Charles, Michel, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. To learn more about the shared responsibilities for China and the EU in the post pandemic era, Shane Bigham invited Adjunct Professor Ivo Ganchev (Beijing Union University) to join him on The Beijing Hour. You can listen to the full episode of the show from Sep 14, 2020 on the China Plus website and to the interview excerpt from the Listen section of this website. A full transcript of the excerpt is also available below.
Shane Bigham: What are some of the shared responsibilities for China and the EU in the post pandemic era?
Ivo Ganchev: China and the EU have a number of shared responsibilities. So first of all, both of them are responsible for their own recovery, so we hope that their own people and businesses will be able to get back to normal as soon as possible, and the second type of responsibility that China and the EU have as to each other, trade activity between them as worth over a billion euros per day as these are two hugely important trading partners and each side knows that, allowing this trade relationship to develop and to flourish is important for their economic development. So in this sense, China and the EU or to some extent interdependent and partially responsible for each other’s economic recovery and finally both sides have responsibility to the international community, which in the current context comes in the form of defending existing international institutions, and this system of multilateral dialogue and mechanisms and the cooperation that we’ve set up.
Shane Bigham: What’s your take on the prospects for cooperation in areas such as the digital economy and innovation?
Ivo Ganchev: If we look at the development strategies of both China and the EU, I think we’ll figure out that there’s no doubt on each side that the digital economy is the way forward, and that it will create tremendous economic growth in the years to come from the Chinese side I think there’s a lot of hunger for innovation, and establishing joint projects with Europe will of course facilitate the faster and more efficient growth and development of new products and projects because as we know from history, an international environment facilitates innovation, especially in the digital world, and from the European side I think there’s actually a lot to learn from China. China has been a great success story, especially when it comes to the implementation of the digital economy, China has been tremendous in terms of taking great ideas to the market, and this is something that we need to learn from in Europe and we need to make sure that we can do this as well.
Shane Bigham: That was Ivo Ganchev with Beijing Union University talking about the upcoming video conference between Chinese German and EU leaders.
