Chinese FM spokesperson calls on global community to tackle fragmentation together

BEIJING -- The international community needs to work together and support each other in response to the current crisis and work for a better future, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.

It was reported that in an interview on Jan. 2, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warned against fragmentation of the global economy along geopolitical lines due to increasing national security restrictions, with countries gravitating towards separate blocs led by the United States and China. Allowed to continue, she said this could ultimately reduce global GDP by 7 percent.

When asked for comments about relevant reports, Wang Wenbin told a daily press briefing that there is only one planet we call home and one common future for humanity.

"What's needed most is solidarity, and what should be avoided most is fragmentation," he said.

Wang said trade war, tech war, or decoupling, severing of industrial and supply chains, and de-risking are all essentially designed to politicize trade issues and be used as weapons to perpetuate certain country's primacy, hold back emerging markets and developing countries in their development efforts and deprives the 7 billion people of the right to a better life.

"This is neither virtuous nor sustainable. Ultimately, it is the overall interest of the international community that will take the toll and no single country can be spared," said Wang.

The spokesperson noted that the world will not retrogress to a state of isolation and exclusiveness, and still less can it be deliberately divided. Any beggar-thy-neighbor move, bloc-confrontation mentality, and arrogant sense of supremacy are doomed to failure.

China would like to work with all parties to champion universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, firmly reject de-globalization and overstretching of security concepts, oppose all forms of unilateralism and protectionism, uphold the equality of rights, opportunities, and rules among all nations, protect the right of all countries to equal development and advance common development and prosperity, Wang said.