DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- China has signaled that the well-being of citizens in a country does not contradict with its engagement globally, International Trade Center (ITC) executive director Arancha Gonzalez said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.
Gonzalez, who participated in the ongoing annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), said China's support for international efforts on climate change and other multilateral issues is also in line with the interests of the Chinese people.
The ITC is the joint agency of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and United Nations, with international commerce high on its agenda. It supports the internationalization of small and medium enterprises and backs expanding trade opportunities to foster sustainable development.
"We are at the point where there are very different views among (the) big players in the WTO on the value of engaging multilaterally and engaging internationally," said Gonzalez.
In a way, Gonzalez felt this year's Davos theme was anticipated by Chinese President Xi Jinping when he came to the WEF last year to speak about a community with a shared future.
"Some members feel that to be sovereign you must isolate, that you need isolationism and need unilateralism, that you should not and do not cooperate, because cooperating is seen as weak," said the ITC head.
"Other members see that to be more sovereign you need to have more influence and the ability to influence depends on the capacity to engage in international cooperation," she continued.
"When we have a big amount of the population feeling the pain of economic growth and feel it is not being distributed, we run the risk of citizens choosing those politicians that promise a lot of good things by disengaging internationally," Gonzalez said.
"At the end of the day the question is whether the situation of the citizens will be improved though isolationism or unilateralism or through international cooperation."
A multilateral institution like the WTO can play a key role in international cooperation and she sees it as "an insurance policy against a fractured world."
"The signal that the Chinese president gave is that he does not see being the president of China to be contradictory to having a strong China engaging abroad," she noted.
Gonzalez believed that China can help itself and the world by investing in the WTO via discussions on e-commerce and investment facilitation.
