On April 15, the Trade and Development Board of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) held a special meeting focused on economic development in Africa. UNCTAD members voiced deep concern over the current tensions in international trade, emphasizing the adverse impact of abuses of tariffs and trade frictions on developing countries, particularly the least developed countries.

Ambassador Chen Xu, Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland, stated in his remarks that the United States has arbitrarily imposed tariffs and initiated global trade tensions. The escalating trade conflicts are casting an increasingly dark shadow over the African continent and beyond. The use of tariffs by the United States as a tool of maximum pressure and self-serving leverage is a typical unilateralism, protectionism, and economic coercion.This will severely impede the socioeconomic development and modernization efforts of developing countries, including those in Africa, and gravely undermine collective efforts to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

Ambassador Chen emphasized that UNCTAD members are both contributors to and beneficiaries of economic globalization. An open, fair, and stable international economic and trade order serves the common interests of all. He called on all parties to uphold true multilateralism, strengthen solidarity and cooperation, speak with one voice, and resolutely safeguard a rules-based multilateral trading system, thereby steering globalization in the right direction.

China’s statement resonated widely among participants. Many countries echoed the call to uphold multilateralism, support the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core, and oppose unilateralism and trade protectionism, in order to foster an international economic environment conducive to sustainable development and shared prosperity.