International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde has described China's preparation work for the G20 meetings as thoughtful. She also praised China's idea of adding "inclusiveness" to "strong, sustainable and balanced" as important characterizations of healthy growth.
"The objectives were set out from the beginning. The meetings were orderly, organized and disciplined. I would say that most of the objectives that had been set out have actually been achieved. There's always substantial progress when people talk to each other and there was clearly a good spirit of cooperation between the finance ministers, governors of central banks and the international financial institutions," CCTV reported.
"The G20 has been talking about strong, sustainable and balanced growth. We know those words by heart. Well, on the occasion of the Chinese presidency, we have included a fourth characterization, which is inclusive. And it's terribly important to talk about the inclusiveness of growth. It's only a simple word, but if by that we mean, making sure that everybody benefits, making sure that small- and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs have access to financing, understand the tax environment in which they operate," she said.
Leadership Commended
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also spoke highly of the Chinese leadership in focusing the upcoming summit of the Group of 20 on promoting green growth and bolstering the presence of developing countries.
"I commend China for steering the G20 summit this year in such a successful way leading the G20 towards an action agenda that will come in full support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change," the secretary-general said in an interview with several UN-based Chinese media outlets on Friday.
"For the first time in the history of the G20, the Chinese leadership is ... aligning the action agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals and the climate change agreement, in their action agenda of the G20," Ban said.
"This is the first time that the G20 leaders are gathering to discuss the Sustainable Development Goals and climate change, (and) how we implement them in parallel," he added.
The 11th G20 summit, to be held on Sept. 4-5 in China's eastern city of Hangzhou, is expected to make an action plan on implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and to focus more on development issues with an aim to inject new impetus into the world economy and promote global consensus on development.
The theme of the summit is "Toward an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive World Economy."
