by Xinhua writers Yu Jiaxin, Liang Xizhi
LONDON, June 2 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 pandemic may lead to a new world order, in which more global efforts need to be strengthened to prevent more catastrophes, a commentator with news daily the Financial Times has said.
The pandemic, which has caused a massive economic slowdown, will certainly lead to the worst global recession since the 1930s, Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the newspaper, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
"It will have inevitable financial consequences," he said, adding that the value of financial assets will be impaired, equity prices will be adjusted downwards, expectations of insolvency will rise, and a large number of businesses and countries will not recover for a long time.
According to the World Economic Outlook report released by the International Monetary Fund in April, the global economy will contract by 3 percent in 2020, with some 170 countries facing narrowing in their gross domestic product this year due to the pandemic's impact.
He noted that a financial crisis has not come yet, and that it is too early to say how bad the financial consequences will be "because they're going to unfold over the next year or two, or three even."
If countries could have taken action at the very beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, things would have been much better, Wolf said.
To reduce the impact brought by COVID-19, different countries have adopted different economic policies, Wolf noted, adding that they are broadly sensible, though two big policy areas have been left uncovered.
Firstly, help for emerging and developing countries in great need of health and capital resources is not sufficient, he noted. "If we don't help them, we will have a very weak recovering because they account for a huge part of the world economy and humanity."
Secondly, international cooperation on health, financial support, debt relief and trade is far from enough, he said.
He predicted that with the rise of suspicion and more inward-looking policies, the world will likely face disorder after the pandemic.
However, countries across the globe still have tremendous integration and face common problems such as climate change and security issues, he noted. "We have to cooperate, otherwise we will face more catastrophe(s)."
On how globalization will evolve in the post-pandemic period, Wolf, an author of several books on globalization, pointed out that the trend of globalization is mainly decided by two factors, namely technology and policies, with the former making communication more speedy and convenient and the latter impacting governments' attitudes to openness or protectionism.
He said he believes that globalization in the future will have more invisible flows of ideas, information and services due to the development of technology, while the visible movements of goods and people will be reduced and slowed because of more inward-looking policies around the world.
However, in his view, China can offset it to some degree by continuing to pursue a form of reform and opening-up in a more aggressive and accelerated way. "It will help China and the rest of the world." he said. Enditem
