On May 12, the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) hosted a dialogue between Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator and associate editor at the Financial Times and Wang Huiyao, CCG president. Mr. Wolf is a world-renowned journalist covering economics and finance, a strong advocate of globalization and free markets, and the author of a number of influential books including Why Globalization Works and Fixing Global Finance.

Owing to severe impact of the pandemic, the growth of global economy has generally been sluggish at best, while Chinese economy has shown a strong degree of resilience. This discussion covered measures that should be undertaken to promote the recovery of the global economy in post-pandemic times, the role that China will play in that process, as well as how China, the US and the EU can overcome their differences and advance the process of globalization.

This virtual program was part of the CCG “China and the World” webinar series seeking to engage global thought leaders on topics concerning the current situation and dilemmas of globalization and China’s role in it.

Wang Huiyao：Thank you and good afternoon, good morning to all our audiences in China and in other parts of the world, this is a really great opportunity to dialogue with a global opinion leader, Martin Wolf on “China and the World in the era of crisis and renewal”. This is part of a series of dialogues we have been conducting lately. We have actually already talked with Kerry Brown, Graham Allison, Thomas Friedman, Joseph Nye, Anthony Saich and this is the sixth episode. I am very honored to have Martin Wolf with us today.

My name is Huiyao (Henry) Wang, founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization and Martin Wolf is a well-known global opinion leader, one of the world’s most influential financial writers. As we all know, he’s the associate editor and chief economic commentator at the Financial Times. And he has been awarded the CBE, (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2000 for services to financial journalism. He graduated from Oxford University and is a visiting fellow of Nuffield College of Oxford University and a Special Professor at the University of Nottingham and was made Doctor of Science (Economics) of University of London. Mr. Wolf is very well-known in the fields of finance, economy and world affairs at large.

He was also a senior economist with a very impressive professional life. He worked as a senior economist in the World Bank between 1971 and 1981 for a decade and joined the Financial Times in 1987 where he has been the associate director since 1990 and chief economic commentator since 1996. He is very influential in terms of finance and economics around the world and has been named in the list of top 100 of the global thinkers by the Prospect and Foreign Policy. He’s the author of highly regarded books including Why Globalization Works, I bought this book at the UN head office in New York, actually a few years ago. Another book is called Fixing Global Finance and his most recent book is The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis. All his books actually have been translated by China Citic Press Group and this dialogue is actually in partnership with China Citic Press Group as well. He’s a participant in the annual China Development Forum where I met Martin for quite a few times and also, I met him in Singapore and elsewhere in the world too. So Good Morning, Martin and great to have you and maybe you can say a few words to our audiences.

Martin Wolf: So, first of all, it’s a great pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much for having invited me and it’s also an honor. I am always amused when people introduce me as a Commander of the British Empire which just shows, as I like to say, whatever the British have lost in the last century, they haven’t lost their sense of humor. Since obviously the British Empire disappeared very very long time ago, which is a good thing in my view. I’m very pleased to have this dialogue on a crucial subject at a crucial time. We are going through extraordinary transformations in the world order because of economic developments, because of political developments and of course, because of the pandemic. So, we are all being forced to rethink our view of the world how it’s going to evolve and I’ve come to the view I’m just completing a book on the future of the West. But I have come to the view that this decade is looking increasingly – what I refer to – as a hinge of history one of those decisive moments in human affairs which will determine the future of our world for a long time. Will it be prosperous and peaceful? Will we manage our big challenges above all, climate? Will we manage to cooperate satisfactorily or will the order we have created in the last 20 or 30 years – the order of global cooperation for all its failures of globalization – will it collapse? And I think those issues are very much alive and the next 10 years or so is likely to provide us with answers. And I have to say myself I am very concerned about the developments we see, and I’ve been around as has been noted for a long time. And I think this is possibly the most challenging period of my lifetime. I was born, I should say, immediately after the Second World War, so I didn’t experience that catastrophe. But I’ve been alive now for 75 years and this is a very challenging period we’re now entering.