Full coverage: Xi Visits Switzerland, Attends WEF Annual Meeting

by Xinhua writers Liu Chang, Zhu Dongyang

BEIJING, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- Jojivini Vuna was lucky: The 90-year-old Fijian woman had moved into her son's concrete house just days before the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall hit her country and flattened her wooden cottage early last year.

Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston, with record-breaking category five winds, claimed 44 lives and leveled villages when it swept through the 300-odd islands that make up Fiji's archipelago.

For not only Fiji, but also the rest of the world, it was a bitter and vivid illustration of what's at stake in the face of ever-more-ferocious weather anomalies fueled by climate change.

Among climate change's victims, China, the world's largest developing country, took a bold step to pledge 3 billion U.S. dollars in 2015 to help other developing countries. A year later, it played a decisive role in the eventual delivery of a global climate change accord in Paris.

China's widely applauded boldness in fighting what is likely humanity's cruellest enemy was rooted in a vision conceived in 2012 and carried forward by President Xi Jinping of building a community of shared future for all.

XI'S ROADMAP, WORLD'S FUTURE

Upholding the concept of building a community with a shared future for all humankind, the Chinese president is expected to offer a package of solutions to fixing a flawed global governance system at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos later this month.

Xi's attendance comes when the world is at a critical juncture between charging forward with globalization or backsliding on global economic integration. His chances -- and challenges -- to help shape a better world for all are unprecedented.

It was in Switzerland that China made its debut on global arena, when then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai arrived in the lake-laced Geneva for an international conference on the situation in Vietnam and Indochina in 1954.

The following 63 years witnessed China's miraculous rise from a war-torn and poverty-ridden country to the world's second largest economy. Riding the tide of globalization and regional integration, China has tightly knitted its interests with those of the rest of the world.

Over the past two decades, China has contributed about 30 percent to global growth and played a quintessential role in pulling the recessionary world economy back to growth following the 2008 global financial tsunami. Today, the country Xi leads is widely seen as a problem-solver with global influence.

Since taking office, Xi has pursued sweeping and painstaking reforms at home to build an innovation-based and environment-friendly economy, all the while reducing poverty rates.

Globally, China has helped cure the Ebola pandemic in Africa and build roads, bridges, schools and hospitals in Asia and Latin America.

These endeavors reflect the guiding vision of building a community with a shared future for everyone, fostered from ancient Chinese wisdom treasuring harmony, peace, equality and benevolence.

BETTER COMMUNITY TAKES SHAPE

For Xi, building a better world is in line with his roadmap to build a better China. The idea of a global community was carried out by a host of detailed and down-to-earth diplomatic guidelines.

In relations with neighboring countries, Xi stresses the four principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness. Regarding his Africa policy, he insists on bringing real benefits to the people of the continent and help promote their economic and social progress.

In a matter of four years, Xi substantialized his vision for a better world by proposing the Belt and Road Initiative and the creation of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and the BRICS new development bank. Aimed at upgrading infrastructure and boosting trade, the three have been backed by more than 100 countries and international organizations.

Wang Yiwei, a senior foreign affairs expert with China's Renmin University, said that improved infrastructure is key to reducing poverty and sharing the benefits of globalization, adding that "it is part of the secrets of China's success in the past 30 years."

In order to bring the world together as one community under a shared destiny, Xi has expounded throughout his tours around the world, including appearance at UN assemblies, APEC meetings and G20 summits, the need for consensus building.

MORE BALANCED GLOBALIZATION

The Chinese president's desire to forge a better world based on dialogue and mutual respect has inspired people from across the world. For many, his vision warrants a more rational and fair version of globalization.

Jorge Castro, head of Argentina's Strategic Planning Institute, said "China's advancement of cooperation and dialogue in international relations is not some baffling world outlook, but based on the conclusion of its own self-development experience."

According to Cui Hongjian, a senior fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, Xi's roadmap for a better world is different from the West's plan mainly in two aspects.

"For one thing, China takes the developing countries as partners on an equal footing, and is always ready to help without pre-conditions; but the West always treats the less developed countries as charity beggars, and responds to their needs with arrogance and impatience."

Furthermore, China's aid model is more sustainable than the West's. The Chinese provide the developing world not only with fish "but also a way to fish," Cui said.P Marisela Connelly, an expert on Chinese studies from the College of Mexico, noted that "China's willingness to speak for the vulnerable side of globalization is because, like many of them today, China was once bullied and exploited by the West for nearly a century. The misfortune partly decided China's current call for justice on global issues."

China's devotion to the well-being of the vulnerable has probably been best felt by villagers in Fiji.

In 2013, with the help of China, a seawall to fend off high tides was erected in the coastal village of Kiuva on Fiji's main island of Viti Levu. The project was widely praised by local residents and officials.

The seawall is a firm promise from China to Vuna and hundreds of thousands like her that in the face of disasters they will never be left alone.

A few days later in Switzerland, the Chinese president will issue the same promise in person.