2016 Think 20 Trade and Investment Conference
was Held in Geneva On June 8
2016 Think 20 (T20) Trade and Investment Conference was held at S3 conference room of World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland on 8, June. The conference was organized by three Chinese leading think tanks: Institute of World Economics and Politics (IWEP), Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS); Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS); Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China (RDCY). These three think tanks were officially appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China as T20 chairs in 2016. The conference was co-organized by two Geneva local think tanks: International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), International Trade, Development and Economic Governance Advisory Services Center (IDEAS Center).The conference was also in association with the WTO as part of its trade dialogue series.
The theme of 2016 T20 Trade and Investment Conference was "Global Trade and Investment Cooperation: Openness, Inclusiveness and Growth". General Director of IWEP Yuyan Zhang, Chief Executive of ICTSD Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz, and Chairman of Board IDEAS Centre Nicolas Imboden gave welcome speeches in the beginning. Director Zhang concluded his speech as follows: "Bringing about Pareto improvement is good, but not good enough. Let me conclude by quoting one of the sentences from Confucius: develop and let develop, establish and let establish. Accordingly, we can perceive his phrase as Confucius improvement, and make its realization an ideal goal not only for G20 but also for human beings". The Director-General of WTO, Roberto Azevêdo, and Permanent Representative and Ambassador of China to the WTO, Jianhua Yu, successively made keynote speeches in the first session.
DG Azevêdo highlighted a range of suggestions, including the need to take a pragmatic approach to negotiations and to look at issues such as digital trade and small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs), and he paid tribute to China’s leadership in G20. Mr. Yu elaborated China's works on trade and investment issues when as the president of Group 20 (G20) this year, and he expressed his expectations to T20.
The conference had four sessions, which are: Consolidating the MTS: Recent Development and Next Step (Session 1); Reflecting upon Multilateralism and Regionalism: Coherence and Transparency (Session 2); Re-energizing Global Trade Growth: Trends and Measures (Session 3); and Harnessing Trade and Investment Policy Coherence and Global Investment Cooperation: Developments and Mechanism (Session 4). Twenty-one distinguished experts from world well-known think tanks, international agencies and universities had given their speeches, they are from China, US, Germany, Italy, Turkey, South Korea, Switzerland and so on. These famous institutions include Peterson Institute for International Economics, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, International Monetary Fund, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Inter-American Development Bank and etc.
Assistant General Director of IWEP Hong Song made speech in Session 3, and Director of International Trade Department of IWEP Yan Dong hosted the Session 4. Chunding Li, Yueju Ni, Tao Ma and Qingyi Su from International Trade Department of IWEP and Bing Han from International Investment Department of IWEP, Youjun Chen from SIIS and Junyong Xiang from RDCY also joined the conference.
