Maximum cooperation is needed to achieve progress

WANG XIAOYING/CHINA DAILY China leads the Global South in realizing its aspirations for inclusive, fair, ecologically sustainable and people-centered human development As 2024 draws to a close, the prevailing landscape of global development presents two contrasting features. Titled "Global Development Report 2024 — A World of Turbulence and Change: Cooperation to Address Global Common Challenges", it not only comprehensively examines the problems plaguing mankind's development, but also offers practical ideas for overcoming them. All its solutions converge around one big idea: What the world needs is maximum global cooperation — not only South-South cooperation but also South-North cooperation — to achieve inclusive, fair, ecologically sustainable and people-centered development that does not exclude anyone among the billions of people on Earth. In this sense, the CIKD report faithfully captures the spirit of the China-proposed Global Development Initiative, which aims "to close the development deficit and accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda". The CIKD report says: "By the end of 2023, China's Smart Education platform, which had been online for just over a year, had attracted more than 100 million registered users, over 36.7 billion page-views, and 2.5 billion visitors, giving many children in rural and remote areas the access to the 'same class' as those in big cities and enabling online learning for nearly 200 million primary and secondary school students in China."