While the world is moving towards multipolarity, the challenges to the current world order are also growing. States particularly involved in conflicts are promoting notion of ‘might is right’ and are engaged in zero-sum competition. Economic development is slowing down, while armed conflict and wars are on the rise. In the evolving scenario, China has posed an interesting question: What kind of world we need and how to build that world? China’s own answer to this question is to build ‘A Global Community of Shared Future’. In this context, President Xi Jinping’s Global Civilization Initiative (GCI)[1] is an important idea aimed at shaping the future for a better world.
The Global Civilization Initiative was presented in the Communist Party of China’s Dialogue with world political parties, held in Beijing on 15 March 2023.[2] The main theme of President Xi’s speech in which he introduced this concept was ‘Join hands on the path towards Modernization’[3]. Notably, in the context of GCI, President Xi discussed four significant aspects: respect and acceptance of diversity of civilizations through dialogue; common values of humanity; importance and need of innovation of civilizations; and developing people-to-people exchanges and cooperation models.
