The Wall Street Journal
JEREMY PAGE
September 27, 2015
UNITED NATIONS—China’s President Xi Jinping sought to mollify concerns about his country’s growing power by pledging billions of dollars to fight poverty and gender discrimination during a United Nations meeting at the end of a weeklong U.S. visit.
The pledges appeared designed to portray China as a global leader on social issues following a U.S. presidential summit on Friday that was dominated by tensions over Beijing’s economic policies, alleged cyberattacks on the U.S., and island-building in the disputed South China Sea.
At a U.N. summit on women’s rights on Sunday, Mr. Xi pledged $10 million to the U.N. agency for women and said China would help developing countries by initiating 100 health projects for women and children and building an equal number of schools for girls in the next five years.
Mr. Xi announced on Saturday that China would launch an assistance fund for developing countries with an initial investment of $2 billion, and step up investment in the least developed countries—mostly in Africa—by at least $12 billion by 2030.
China was “putting justice before interests,” Mr. Xi told the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday, before holding talks with dozens of leaders from developing nations in the southern hemisphere.
That followed a pledge by China on Friday to launch a program by 2017 to cap some greenhouse-gas emissions and put a price on carbon, and to contribute $3.1 billion to help poorer countries finance their own transition programs.
“This is major break with the past,” said Steve Tsang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Nottingham. “It’s the first time China is putting a large amount money” toward international development.
“This shows a new and in some ways positive assertiveness in China’s foreign policy, although a lot will depend on how the money is spent,” he said. “In the short term, for the U.S. visit, I think this is working almost exactly as the Chinese government wanted it to.”
China has long been criticized by the U.S. and other developed countries for not taking on international responsibilities commensurate with its ambitions to be a global power. Chinese overseas aid and investment have focused more on securing resources than achieving humanitarian goals.
In recent months, there have been fresh concerns in the U.S. and many other countries that China’s handling of an economic slowdown and a stock-market crash could affect the broader global economy.
Mr. Xi has sought to focus public attention on the positive aspects of China’s rise at the start and finish of his U.S. visit, which began with meetings with U.S. business leaders in Seattle and will conclude with an address to the U.N. General Assembly on Monday.
Zhang Jun, head of the Chinese foreign ministry’s department of international economic affairs, admitted that there was a strong political component to China’s spending plans, particularly the $2 billion fund for developing countries in the southern hemisphere.
“It’s more political than practical,” he told a briefing on Saturday evening in New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, which was purchased last year by a Chinese company.
“What might be different from other Western countries or traditional donors is that we do not impose political conditions from outside,“ Mr. Zhang said. ”That’s also why the policies and measures taken by China are warmly welcomed by recipient countries in other parts of the world.”
Mr. Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan, also helped to burnish China’s reputation as a global leader, making a rare speech in English on the importance of education for women and girls.
Xi Jinping says China will offer billions of dollars
