World becomes more globalized, multipolar since restoration of China's lawful seat in UN -- expert

Since the restoration of China's lawful seat in the United Nations (UN), the past decades have seen the development of a more globalized, multipolar world, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairman of the Kuhn Foundation, has recently told Xinhua.

"China's diplomatic history over the last five decades or so has been a very important probe into understanding not only the development of China, but also the development of a more globalized world, a more multipolar world, a world that will go into the future quite different than it has been in the past," said the U.S. expert on China.

During his interview with Xinhua, Kuhn praised China's commitment to providing global public goods. "It's a significant development that will characterize China's engagement with the world," Kuhn said, adding that the public goods are designed to maintain stability and continuity across the world.

He noted that China has been the largest contributor of UN peacekeeping forces, with the Chinese navy part of the global anti-piracy campaign around the Horn of Africa for many years. "The current example is that China has provided more COVID-19 vaccines, particularly to the developing world than any other country has," Kuhn said.

China's global role has seen "a dramatic transformation," Kuhn said, adding that to understand China's role in today's world is "really important to understand it in a historical context."

China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, a milestone event, has accelerated the country's engagement with the external world "quite dramatically," beginning with trade and the development of a manufacturing base in China, which later expanded into the manufacturing center of the world "in a very real sense," he said.

"That began a process of China engaging very substantially with the world on a progressive basis," said Kuhn. "As it has become the second largest economy, it even has broader requirements to engage with the world, to help the world broadly because it is a truism that no country can be totally isolated in today's world."