Aligning the Belt and Road (B&R) initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) has set a model for mutually beneficial regional economic cooperation. With a focus on the two’s cooperation and a new world economic order, Sergey Glazyev, minister for integration and macroeconomics of the Eurasian Economic Commission, and Wu Xiaoqiu, vice president of Renmin University of China, had a dialogue in Beijing in late December 2019.

In his book The Last World War: The U.S. to Move and Lose, Glazyev observes the global economy and sheds light on economic trends and how to respond to crises and economic turmoil after a study of the laws of global technical-economic development over long cycles.

Starting with the replacement of the technical structure, Glazyev expounded on how technological progress impacts the development of the world economy. He regarded technological progress as the driving force for economic growth. If the economy can develop soundly, economic growth will occur. China is using technology to achieve its own economic leap, and India and Southeast Asian countries are also becoming new economic growth centers.

According to Glazyev, the world economic order needs to implement integrated institutional policies, improve the efficiency of world economic development and integrate knowledge and capital, so as to ensure the sharing of social welfare. He suggested the alignment of the EAEU and the B&R initiative under the framework of the newly integrated world economic order, which is to say realizing local currency conversion in mutual trade and joint investment, creating a development mechanism that jointly supports investment, and achieving market integration. The EAEU and the B&R initiative complement each other and can promote Eurasian integration.

China’s development model is successful in that China has emancipated the mind and sought truth from facts when exploring development. It has found the correct direction and path, that is, a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics, Wu observed.

Regarding China-Russia relations, Wu said that China and Russia are facing common development tasks, and the two countries should learn from each other and jointly maintain world peace and stability.

Glazyev said that the world is currently undergoing a new round of technological revolution. Facing the new crisis brought by American hegemonism and protectionism, China and Russia can promote the alignment of the EAEU and the B&R initiative to build a more just and reasonable new world economic order.

The conjugation of the two necessitates alignment at the level of the financial system, Glazyev noted.

Wu said that the US hegemony lies in the internationalization of the US dollar. Although the US dollar will remain the most important global currency for a long time to come, the Chinese RMB is capable of becoming an important member of the international monetary system. If China wants to build its own international trade settlement system, it must promote the completion of RMB internationalization.

As the publisher of the Chinese version of The Last World War, Zhang Shaohong, editor-in-chief of China’s World Knowledge Publishing House, attended the dialogue and gave a speech. For a long time, Chinese academia has been deeply influenced by Western realism, liberalism, constructivism and the hypothesis of the clash of civilizations, among other international relations theories, Zhang said, suggesting learning more from Russia, India, Iran and South Africa to obtain a more objective and balanced understanding of the current world.