Cars move on a street in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, Aug 27, 2016. The 11th G20 summit will be held from Sept 4 to 5 in Hangzhou. (Photo/Xinhua)
As global leaders prepare to gather in picturesque Hangzhou in East China's Zhejiang province to attend this year's G20 Leaders' Summit, and the German port city of Hamburg prepares to play host to the next G20 summit, they can learn a great deal from a rapidly growing economy and an industrialized giant about how to improve their respective economies.[Special Coverage]
But to lead the world economy out of the ongoing downturn, world leaders have to think "beyond G20", which means they have to focus on more than macroeconomic policy coordination and make earnest efforts to reform the global financial regime. For example, they should seek to improve the livelihoods of people across the world and increase their respective countries' competitiveness.
The mission of the G20 summit is to inject new life into the global economy, something which China and Germany, as G20 summit hosts in 2016 and 2017, can review to improve their own competitiveness.
The failure of the United States to regulate Wall Street, especially stock traders' greed－which led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and subsequently the global financial crisis－was criticized at the G20 summit in Washington in 2008. While all countries made efforts to plug the loopholes in the financial and banking sectors and regulate their fiscal policies, Germany shone the most for keeping its real economy thriving, the jobless rate low, and remaining a strong regional power despite being a part of the European Union.
The Germany we see today has grown out of the rubble of World War II and has remained committed to global peace. On the economic front, Berlin's forward-looking strategy of Industry 4.0 vision is visionary and successful. It has entered into partnership with Beijing to enrich and further develop Industry 4.0 to cash in on internet technologies and revolutionize the real economy. Germany, in fact, has been one of the rare Western industrial powers willing to share its high-tech expertise with China. Of course, China too has lots of experiences to share in return.
When G20 leaders gather for Hangzhou summit, they will experience firsthand how this ancient city has modernized while maintaining its traditional charm and historic significance over the past three decades. In fact, many Chinese cities have undergone such a transformation in the same time.
Moreover, China has lifted millions of families out of poverty over the past three decades and has vowed to eradicate absolute poverty by 2020. And through its Belt and Road Initiative, it has become the first G20 economy to offer a tangible way of boosting global economic growth by breaking, rather than building, barriers.
But China still faces challenges in transforming its development pattern, bridging the widening wealth gap and offering equal livelihood opportunities to its citizens to become a socialist market economy.
Germany that relies on its own model of social market economy by focusing on competitiveness and social inclusiveness has become an example for China. The governments of the two countries have established a consultation mechanism with nearly all of their cabinet ministers taking part in discussions and sharing their experiences.
So if the agenda-setting process of the G20 summit allows, Beijing should organize a session on the economic development models of Germany and China. Perhaps the G20 leaders attending the Hangzhou summit should take a tour of Zhejiang province, or take a ride on the high-speed train to Shanghai or Beijing to experience the positive changes brought about by China's economic development.
And when Hamburg hosts the next G20 summit, the participants could venture out into the city to learn from the practices of Germany to revive their own countries' economies and offer their peoples a better life.
By Fu Jing
The author is deputy chief of China Daily European Bureau
