Dr. José Ricardo on China’s efforts to build a community with a shared future for mankind and its path of peaceful development

Interview Series: Community with a Shared Future for Mankind

EP07: Dr. José Ricardo on China’s efforts to build a community with a shared future for mankind and its path of peaceful development

Welcome back. In today's episode, Dr. José Ricardo dos Santo Luz Junior, Co-Chairman and CEO of LIDE China, will discuss about China’s efforts of building a community with a shared future for mankind and its path of peaceful development.

Q1: Dr. Ricardo, thank you for joining us. Earlier we’ve discussed how the BRICS mechanism has helped to promote multilateralism in the world. What role do you think China plays in building mechanisms to promote multilateralism, and why do you think China has stayed committed in building these mechanisms?

José Ricardo dos Santo Luz Junior: In a time when there is a lot of radicalism, China has been playing an important role and with a lot of responsibility in terms of promoting multilateralism. And through multilateralism, China has been promoting this “common shared future for all mankind”. It’s a symbol of developing a better world for all the people.

China has been building successfully this community with a shared future through peaceful development. This can be seen not only with the BRICS mechanism, but also with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), with all the policies that China implemented during COVID in terms of donating products, in terms of sending medical teams and specific equipment to help the world fight against the common enemy.

Q2: Can you give us a more specific example please?

José Ricardo dos Santo Luz Junior: One of the biggest examples was during COVID after 2020, in which China not only provided several equipment for governments in need, for countries in need, but also donated a lot of vaccines, provided guidelines in terms of how to avoid (catching the virus) and to let people survive in other countries. So China in the area of COVID has been playing a vital responsibility in terms of donation, in terms of sending medical teams, doctors specialized in COVID to other countries, not only the countries with extreme poverty, but other countries that were willing and eager to buy this sort of equipment from China.

Q3: Thank you, Dr. Ricardo. You have mentioned the Belt and Road Initiative to be an effort of building a community with a shared future for mankind. In your understanding, in what aspects can this initiative benefit the world, or at least its participant countries?

José Ricardo dos Santo Luz Junior: The Belt and Road Initiative, the BRI, is a very interesting policy which was established in a very intelligent way by President Xi Jinping in 2013, because it cannot only be seen as an infrastructure project. If you judge BRI just as infrastructure policy, you will definitely diminish the size of the BRI. The BRI is a very big umbrella which has different sectors and different elements which can be strengthened between China and the signatory countries.

China has over 135 countries which already announced their interest and have signed the agreement with China, and this can be seen not only with the development of the infrastructure with technology from China, but also the exchange in terms of the health sector, the intercultural exchange among others.

Q4: That’s a very insightful view of the BRI. Can you elaborate more on the work the BRI has done to help the development of other countries? In terms of infrastructure, I can highlight ports, airports, highways, among others, which can be shown that China has successfully achieved this goal with the signatory countries in order to develop these projects that promotes not only the infrastructure itself, but also the interconnection between people, getting people closer.

José Ricardo dos Santo Luz Junior: The technologies that China have been developing has been tremendous and vast. With the technology and intelligence behind the technology which was developed by China, the BRI can promote and can provide interconnection between people.

Q5: Thank you, Dr. Ricardo. I will conclude the interview with one final question. There are some Western views that have expressed fear of China’s initiatives being the country’s attempt to create “hegemony”. What is your take on this claim?

José Ricardo dos Santo Luz Junior: Different and several types of examples proves and shows that China never wants to play a role of hegemony, but always wants to have this win-win cooperation through a peaceful development with the other countries.

As President Xi Jinping, once said, the world lives in a global community and it’s more than time for us to share common prosperity in terms of a common shared future.