Editor’s Note:?China and the European Union are strong supporters of multilateralism and the two sides have maintained cooperation in many fields. But in face of the threat of a divided world, how do we foster the collaborative spirit??David Gosset, the founder of Europe-China Forum, discussed with?Stefano Manservisi, former Director-General of International Cooperation and Development at the European Commission.

A Time of Collaboration, hosted by Mr. Gosset, is a high-level dialogue with international veteran diplomats, business elites and outstanding scholars. The serial interviews are presented by China Focus in association with DG2CI Limited.

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David Gosset: Clearly, Stefano, you know more than others that in order to tackle so many issues of our time, one needs collaboration, international cooperation. How do we foster the collaborative spirit, Stefano?

Stefano Manservisi: David, thank you very much. First, I’m very pleased to be with you discussing this because I know and I appreciate all the efforts that you are deploying in order to facilitate dialogue and to show a concrete example of how we can do it. I think that everybody, starting with the pandemic, this is not something rhetoric, I think is something actual, this is changing our world.

And this is changing also the perception on how the individuals are in the middle of this world. And then, I think that putting back the individual at the center of this should be our guiding line in order to find the form of cooperation, cooperation with people and for people.

I think that if we look at what are the big things in the world, leaving aside now the positioning of the bloc, because this is also politics, it’s simply that what we have, it isn’t sustainable. Therefore, we have to work in order to give everybody opportunities, to the youth, to women, to those which are systematically out of the picture. I think this is something that should be our common target.

David Gosset: Stefano, thank you very much. You spoke about multilateralism. Clearly, China and the EU are strong supporters of multilateralism. Coming back to collaboration, cooperation, could you give us a very good symbol of the success of Sino-European cooperation?

Stefano Manservisi: I think that the most evident on which we have to keep building is the COP21, the agreement on the reduction of emissions and on climate change. And the Paris Agreement in COP21, it was about emissions, but it is the starting point. Today it’s the green economy. And I see that even if with different languages, the green economy, a plan of the European Union, and the strong reforms in terms of orientating the Chinese economy around this green concept from President Xi, has been converging, de facto, converging. Then in the middle, there are a lot of different interests. But at the end of the day, the biggest way to cooperate, the biggest example remains this.

But I think it would be important not only now to go on in taking all what it is with that, the biodiversity which is discussed in China, the issue of population, the issue of what this implies in terms of changing the production patterns, etc. What is still a bit missing is how to trickle down on concrete things at the small level. I can refer to many concrete things that we have been doing between Europeans and Chinese together in many parts of the world. But it remains that the difficulty is at the technical level to invent things to do together.

I take one example. Building roads and railways, Chinese are top for quality, for technology, and for capacity and speed of doing that. Why not joining forces in order to build a big railway project, transcontinental railways, European and Chinese? They are the only two in Africa which are able and credible to do it. Chinese financing and European Union companies doing, and vice versa. These are things in which we have to sit and do together. Here, we are not there yet. But I want to underline this because this is the concrete way to do things. I have talks with the vice-president of the China International Development Cooperation Agency, as it has been recently created. They were eager. We were eager. But then at a certain moment, we have to build this kind of trust, operationally, which is still a bit blocking. We have to do it and concentrate on this.

David Gosset: So, Stefano, if I understand well what you’re saying, you think that a part of the future of Sino-European cooperation is in Africa. Am I correct, Stefano?

Stefano Manservisi: Yes, you are correct. Because I think that Africa is the continent of many problems of the present, but of many solutions of the future.

And these solutions are in the interest of everybody, not only the Africans, first and foremost, but the Africans are not hanging in a vacuum. They are not to be treated as the poor of the earth, as too often the Europeans did and the Chinese did it. So, I think that the real development of Africa, or the real growing up of trade, of economic transformation, of putting youth at work in Africa, is a common interest. And I strongly believe that in Africa we could do a lot of things together in the interest of Africans, of Europe, of China, and eventually of the world.

David Gosset: Thank you very much, Stefano, for these very constructive views. And I think China and the EU, the way they cooperate, show that we are on the path actually of progress despite all the many crises that one needs to tackle. Thank you very much, Stefano.

Stefano Manservisi: Thank you, David. It was a pleasure. And let’s keep working.