China highlighted as future host for major UN campus

The United Nations must revisit its founding premises and embrace true multilateralism, said Jeffrey Sachs, a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, at a Vision China event held on Monday at the UN headquarters in New York.

With over 25 years of UN experience and five decades in global affairs, Sachs called for the UN to establish new campuses across the world, adding that China can play a role in making this vision a reality.

"We need to make the UN truly multilateral," Sachs said. "That means creating multiple global campuses, not concentrating the institution in the US and Western Europe."

"I would urge China to establish a major UN campus in Beijing or Shanghai. China is uniquely positioned to lead the transition to sustainable energy. It produces the technologies we need — solar, wind, batteries — at the scale required for a safe climate future. We need to mobilize that capacity globally, not limit it," he said.

Sachs emphasized that at the heart of the UN's challenges is the absence of genuine cooperation among major powers.

"We must return to cooperation among the major powers. There is no fundamental conflict of interest between the United States, China and Russia. The divisions are ideological, exaggerated and often irrational," he said. "America must abandon the illusion that it 'runs the world'. That was always delusional, and today it is dangerous."

Reflecting on decades of international tensions, Sachs said that conflicts have often been misunderstood and misrepresented.

"The root causes of these conflicts were never sound. They were misconstrued, often by the West, which sought to preserve its privileges through ideological crusades. And we lost a historic chance for cooperation," he said.

Although the UN has worked for the benefit of many countries, Sachs said that it has been disproportionately shaped by Western powers. He suggested that countries such as China, India and other developing countries must take on larger roles in shaping their future.

Sachs also praised China, highlighting President Xi Jinping's Global Governance Initiative as an important contribution to international cooperation.

"These are broad, very important concepts for the world to cooperate, work together and solve problems," he said. "China is playing a unique role in proposing these solutions."

Looking back to the institution's origins, Sachs said the UN was founded on the hope that great powers would cooperate after World War II.

"Unfortunately, my country, the US, was not very cooperative," he said. "The basis for the UN was cooperation with China, with the Soviet Union or Russia, with the UK. But the institution has not lived up to its promise because that strong cooperation has been absent."

Given the global challenge, Sachs added that the US and China need to work together. "The most urgent point is that the United States should cooperate with China. It has to change its mindset so that it is one of cooperation, not one of confrontation or conflict."

mingmeili@chinadailyusa.com