China will ‘actively’ help to resolve international conflicts, ex-diplomat says

China will actively participate in settling international conflicts and improve mechanisms for resolving them, a former Chinese diplomat has said, stressing that Hong Kong could serve as an “important bridge” for exchanges and that a recently established mediation body in the city would bolster international rule of law.

At the Global Prosperity Summit in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Han Zhiqiang, vice-president of the China Public Diplomacy Association, who formerly served as Beijing’s ambassador to Thailand, addressed last week’s landmark summit in Beijing between President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump.

“The two presidents … have reached important common understanding on maintaining stable economic and trade ties, expanding practical cooperation in all fields and handling mutual concerns in a proper manner,” Han said in his keynote speech.

The three-day summit marked the first visit by a US President to China in nearly a decade, and saw the two leaders agree to build a “constructive, strategically stable relationship” – a new term to define the framework of ties between the two countries.

In his address, Han outlined Beijing’s Global Governance Initiative, which was unveiled last September and emphasises inclusive multilateralism, sovereign equality and developmental autonomy free from ideological conditions.

The key focuses of the initiative include upholding the authority of the United Nations and addressing what Han called the “security deficit” in global governance.