Can China use its soft power wisely to heal the world?

Hosting the G20 summit meeting in Hangzhou (杭州) marked China’s international coming of age, which was done with wonderfully colourful showmanship. But the glitter cannot hide that the global system under which we all live has too many dangerous fault lines. Hangzhou and subsequent international meetings in Vientiane and Geneva, and crucial meetings at the UN this week and in Washington, show a system on the verge of collapse, unable to cope with the existing political and economic challenges, let alone new issues.

China’s ‘ghost town’ G20 venue: heightened security leads to empty streets, closed shops and residents on holiday

Can China, as the emerging superpower with global economic muscle and growing political clout, make a difference? On the showing in Hangzhou and subsequently, it is not easy to be optimistic.

In terms of style and delivery, President Xi Jinping (習近平) should be rated an A minus, given the heavy-handed security that closed down the city to ensure world leaders would enjoy sunny days untroubled by encounters with real people.

The single real achievement of Hangzhou was made before the summit opened, and it was a bilateral agreement between China and the US to ratify the Paris agreement on climate change. The G20 meeting itself concluded with a string of platitudinous promises that did little to grasp the real problems of the world.