Donald Trump (Xinhua file photo)
by Xinhua writers Zhu Junqing, He Jing
BEIJING, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- From Brexit and Donald Trump's win in U.S. presidential race to Matteo Renzi's defeat in Italian referendum, the year 2016 witnessed a cluster of "black swans" events in the Western world featured by evident social cleavage and institutional defects.
Rooted deep in the Western democratic systems, such flaws as reassessment-needed election systems were fueled by social media, a revolutionary phenomenon, and triggered unexpected changes, said observers both inside China and abroad.
They believed that these are just a beginning and predicted increasing instability into 2017 against the backdrop of fragile economic recovery, potential terrorist attacks, the worst refugee crisis facing Europe since World War II, among other challenges.
It is also worried that Trump's foreign policy stances and military posture, coupled with the sweeping of populism in Europe, sow uncertainties in global political domain and may hinder the trend of globalization.
IMMANENT CAUSES
The Western society has long showed disintegration between the establishment and non-establishment, political elite and grassroots, native citizens and immigrants.
Tony Blair, former British prime minister, told USA Today earlier this month that there is immense amount of anger at the established ways of doing things, and more anger in politics. He said a whole group of people feel ignored by those in power.
Jim O'Neill, a famous economist who has created the BRIC nations acronym, said "the policy elite of the past 25 to 30 years have lost the ability to connect with normal people."
Fabrizio Francisi, Italian geopolitical analyst, said referendum as a direct democratic tool has come into problems, and its disadvantage and role need to be reassessed.
"Direct democracy is dangerous sometimes," he said, adding that the concept of so-called popular sovereignty usually distorted the notion of representative democracy.
Common sense and historical experience have demonstrated that excessive democracy will inevitably kill the democracy itself, he concluded, saying that the Western society has began to reflect on the democratic institutions and tried to seek an alternative effective governance model, however, there is no existed model can be copied.
According to a poll launched November by Ipsos/Sopra Steria in France, 57 percent of persons interrogated think democracy system runs "badly" in the country, and 77 percent think democracy works "worse and worse," 14 points higher than two years ago.
About one third of French respondents think other political systems can be as good as the democracy, two points higher than two years ago, according to the poll.
Wu Bingbing, honorary research fellow at the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, elaborated that European countries in need of labor force preferred to absorb foreign immigrants from countries a little way off in North Africa, Middle East and East Asia, but refused and tried to strip their original culture and religion.
Such move over the past years has created some sorts of racial resentment, caused social division and sowed seeds of unrest, violence and terrorism, which has shocked the whole Europe with a series of brutal attacks, he said.
INEVITABLE RESULTS
History consists of contingencies as well as inevitabilities. The current situation facing the West is sort of historical inevitability and a result accumulated gradually with radical changes in economy, politics and society.
Zheng Yongnian, professor and director of East Asian Institute at National University of Singapore, said capitalism has entered an adjustment phase after reaching its peak in 1800s.
Trump's election, Brexit and right-wing's popular support in Europe, all reflection of populism, can be considered as a response to capitalism in due time as the socialist movement did in the beginning of the 1900s, he said.
Zhang Yansheng, head researcher of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said such "black swan events" seem surprising, but actually "normal and rational," as "many people around the world thought opening up has harmed their interests, therefore, they want to reflect on the globalization, opening up and European integration."
During the globalization process, inequality has been exacerbated while innovation has been forgotten, resulting in unbalanced distribution between financial oligarchy and ordinary people, and bubbles in finance and real estate.
In the rising of populism in the West, pundits believed that globalization, industrialization and informatization, particularly social media, a revolutionary phenomenon, have played key roles.
O'Neill said, modern media, particularly social media, is a new phenomena to people's lives and has played a role in those "black swan events."
Blair said social media changes the way politics work and the way media works. "It (social media) locks people into conversations with people who just agree with them, who then have a conspiracy theory view of the rest of the world. This is all over the Western world right now."
As Blair, O'Neill also saw problematic issues in social media, explaining that "seven billion people getting access to the internet is a brilliant thing but them getting influenced by non-factual based aspects of that media."
Zheng Yongnian attributed "Trump phenomena" to a social media phenomena featured dispersibility and individuality, saying without social media there will be no such a social movement.
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
On one hand, the rising populist ideology in Europe, along with Trump's election in the United States, have posed potential challenges to economic globalization, trade liberation and global governance as a whole.
On the other hand, the current global governance system, whose rules, macro policies and public goods supply were established in 1950s, not in the globalization era, have lagged behind the economic and political evolvement and can not fully represent emerging markets and developing countries.
In such context, unjust and improper arrangements in the global governance system need to be reformed, and new connotations need to be introduced. China's proposal on global governance featuring mutual consultation, efforts and sharing go with the trend of peaceful development and win-win result.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping has said, reform is about "laying down rules for the international order and international mechanisms" and "deciding in which direction the world will head."
"It is not simply a case of competing for the high ground of economic development, but what roles and functions nations will play in the long-term systemic arrangement of the international order," Xi said.
Wu Bingbing said China's Road and Belt Initiatives and other innovative measures featuring inclusiveness and win-win situation are not only based on China's self-interest, but also aims at common prosperity and sustainable development.
(Xinhua correspondents Liu Yang in Washington, Wang Xingqiao in Rome, Gui Tao in London, Bao Xuelin in Singapore and Han Bing in Paris also contributed to the story.)
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