United development
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The unevenness of the global economic recovery means it will become increasingly difficult for the international community to march in step to overcome the economic downturn.
But the difference in the growth priorities of fast-growing developing economies and low-growth rich countries does not undermine the necessity of global coordination to seek sustainable recovery for all.
Leaders of the world's major developed and developing countries, as well as major international institutions should do their best to promote unity, which is needed more than ever to help the world economy find a solid footing after the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression.
On Friday, President Hu Jintao presented a four-point plan at the G20 Summit in Seoul for achieving strong global economic growth. He urged the international community to not only "champion open trade and promote coordinated development", but also make efforts to reform the global financial system and "narrow the development gap".
Hu's call for greater unity in pursuing balanced growth is all the more important in a world where rising global tensions related to currency issues and global imbalances are tending to make the G20 Summit a platform for expressing disagreement.
Two years after major economies of the world rolled out huge stimulus packages as a joint response to the global financial and economic crisis, the economic situations of emerging markets and rich countries are quite different. On one hand, major developing economies are back on the track of fast growth and are worried about the increasing inflationary pressure at home. On the other, economic growth remains sluggish in most debt-laden rich countries, which have been trying to revive their economies with super-loose monetary policies.
The different pace of recovery in the developed and developing economies has made it difficult for the international community to agree on how their domestic polices to stimulate growth should be synchronized. Worse, some countries' efforts to boost domestic growth, such as the latest round of quantitative easing measures of the United States, may even cause serious fluctuations in the global financial market and macroeconomic instability in the developing countries.
Under such circumstances, G20 leaders should not allow divisions to creep into their fold because of the different and at times conflicting growth priorities different countries have been pursuing. Instead, they should stand firmly together against any beggar-thy-neighbor practice and show greater resolution in reaching a deal to remodel the world economy for fair and sustainable growth.
The G20 Summit in Seoul is the fifth meeting of its kind. And the ongoing global recovery, no matter how fragile and uneven it is, has largely eased the panic the crisis had created.
Yet, to address the underlying imbalance in the global economic and financial systems, the international community should be prepared to go a long way, for which greater unity is mandatory.
