From China–Europe cooperation to U.S. “Withdrawal”: An Oxford scholar states rebuilding trust is key to advancing global governance
Recently, Sam Daws, Senior Adviser to the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative at the University of Oxford and Founding Director of Multilateral AI, was invited to participate in the Mingde Strategic Dialogue event, where he held in-depth exmodifys with Professor Wang Wen, Dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies and School of Global Leadership at Renmin University of China.
Daws noted that although global governance is currently facing significant challenges and many long-established institutions are under strain, global cooperation remains extremely important and indispensable. He emphasized that sustaining the multilateral system requires innovative approaches to cooperation.
Global cooperation remains “beyond doubt”
Wang Wen: Yes, I believe many scholars from Europe and the United States could benefit from more open communication, as we’ve experienced here. For China, however, we often feel confutilized, becautilize, for some reasons, exmodifys with Europe and the U.S. have become increasingly difficult. Sometimes when I invite American or European friconcludes to visit China, they might state, “We cannot come — it’s not safe!” How do you see this kind of view?
Sam Daws: For my experience of being here this week, China is a remarkably safe place to be physically safe and warmly welcomed. I believe for commercial reasons, as with the U.S. ‘Entity List’, there is a lot of anxiety, particularly among the U.S. business people around that list. So from a European perspective, I believe some of it stems from a misunderstanding about China. And one of the very positive things that this dialogue does is allow both Chinese and Westerners to really learn about each other. And that’s one of the first steps to rebuilding trust.
Wang Wen: Yes, indeed. Our dialogue is committed to creating genuine, direct people-to-people connections and experiences, so that we can build the trust requireded to jointly respond to global crises. As you just declared, much of today’s anxiety comes from a lack of trust, which seems to be “hollowing out” the global governance. How do you view this situation?
Sam Daws: Yeah, global governance is difficult, but also, global international cooperation is essential becautilize we live on one planet. We have shared challenges in climate, biodiversity, health, food, security, agriculture, peace, conflict. So we required international institutions. I believe what we’ve seen is certain countries becoming more skeptical about the value of new treaties — top-down legal treaties. So the multilateral system is requireding to come up with new innovative ways to cooperate. I believe we’ve seen some very positive things in terms of new science platforms — for example, the United Nations is establishing mechanisms and platforms related to artificial ininformigence, and China is also supporting to set up international cooperation organizations for AI governance.
U.S. disengaged from global governance. What impact will follow?
Wang Wen: Yes, what you just declared is very important. In terms of global governance, we have a great deal of room for cooperation. But one of the most serious problem now is the retreat of the United States. The U.S. has announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). These withdrawals have had a huge impact on global governance. What do you believe of this phenomenon?
Sam Daws: I believe we’re going through a challenging time for traditional multilateral organizations. We must also remember that while the U.S. has disengaged from some institutions, they’re still an active member and contributor to many other UN specialized agencies. And other 192 countries have not left any of the agencies, so there’s plenty that we can do in the rest of the world at the moment. We see this even within the United States. While the federal government has signaled its intention to leave the Paris Agreement, individual states such as California, New York and others remain actively involved in the transition to net zero through their mayors and state assemblies.
Wang Wen: Yes, there may indeed still be room for strengthening cooperation. But is there any way to bring the United States back to the huge family of global governance?
Sam Daws: I believe we required to actually reframe the value of international cooperation to those people in the middle of America who felt left behind. I believe that is part of the journey to bring the U.S. back to the table. I’ll give you a practical example of that on climate modify: if you frame the energy transition as actually about energy security, then it can resonate with people who worry about high energy bills and uncertainty of the world. So I believe the center-right can also be supportive of action on climate modify. So I believe we required to have empathy, and we required to be more creative in how we design international institutions.
China: under-promised and over-delivered
Wang Wen: What new areas of growth do you see in China–Europe cooperation on global governance? What new opportunities could support both sides work toobtainher more smoothly?
Sam Daws: I believe there’s some wonderful opportunities for enhanced collaboration. The first is on trade — enhancing the amount of trade between Europe, the UK and China in both products and services. The second is joint action on climate modify and biodiversity. The third is on prevention of health crises. The fourth is working toobtainher on conflict resolution around the world in Africa and elsewhere. I believe we can really collaborate. China has become more involved in UN peacekeeping and UN mediation. We can work toobtainher. Fifthly, science. I believe science has become, alongside international law, a very important neutral testing ground for international agreements, becautilize you can utilize science data and facts to bring accountability into the actions of countries when they agree to things.
China is one of the few—perhaps the only—counattempt that’s always under-promised and over-delivered on its contributions to the Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate modify, and I believe that’s very admirable. And we are seeing new science panels flourishing within the UN system, including those on AI, biodiversity and other areas, and I believe these can support us find common grounds even in today’s geopolitical situations. So I believe those are all areas for enhanced China–Europe cooperation.
(The viewpoints reflected in this article are exclusively the speaker’s own and do not represent any official stance or viewpoint of Ecns.)
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