What did Indian PM and the Chinese President say at Davos?

Global diplomacy kicked-off in the New Year with the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda 2022. This week, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a special ‘State of the World’ address at the Davos Agenda via videoconferencing. Chinese President Xi Jinping also addressed the Summit. Let’s look at some of the key points raised by both leaders. 

On Covid, Modi highlighted India’s achievements of having administered 160 crore vaccine doses, adding that a democracy such as India, “has given the world a bouquet of hope.

Modi hailed India as the “pharmacy of the world”, while also praising the digital infrastructure built by his government to deal with the pandemic, mentioning contact tracing apps “Aarogya Setu” and “CoWin”. 

On the reforms front, Modi talked about his government’s achievements in having deregulated several sectors like drones, space, geospatial mapping. “India has carried out big reforms in the outdated telecom sector,” the Indian PM added. 

Modi hailed India’s entrepreneurial talent, mentioning that the country now has more than 60,000 registered startups and over 80 unicorns, of which, 42 entered the club last year itself. He also pitched India as an investment destination for the world. 

Meanwhile, Xi stressed more on the challenges that the world faces amid the pandemic. He spoke about ensuring the equitable distribution of vaccines among countries, and said that China has already delivered 2 billion doses of vaccines to 120 countries and will further contribute another 1 billion doses to African countries. 

On the challenge of ensuring economic recovery of the world economy, Xi said, the global industrial and supply chains have been disrupted. There can be serious negative spillovers if major economies take U-turn in monetary policies.

Amid heightened tensions between the US and China over Taiwan, and amid fears of a possible Russian intervention in Ukraine, Xi said the world needs to discard Cold War mentality, as acts of containment, suppression or confrontation are harmful.

Hailing his country’s economic growth, Xi Jinping talked about the 8% growth in China’s GDP in 2021, and the importance of bettering economic and trade ties with other countries through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement or RCEP. 

Clearly, both the leaders had different perspectives and standpoints, which meant that they stressed somewhat different themes. However, at the same time, there was some similarity in their approaches to the challenges of the day, particularly as far as the importance of multilateralism is concerned.