China plays a central role in driving global economic recovery and growth, and hosting the recent meetings showed the country’s potential to lead with new ideas. With the progress of China’s grand rejuvenation, China will be able to contribute more with Chinese wisdom, solutions and power to global economic development.

Despite the election-year rhetoric in the US, free-trade has been good for both countries and their people, and China and the US should both fight protectionism and support less-restricted trade to lead the global economy back to a path of strong, sustainable and balanced growth.

Despite all the hand-wringing over the vaunted China slowdown, the Chinese economy remains the single largest contributor to world GDP growth. For a global economy limping along at stall speed – and most likely unable to withstand a significant shock without toppling into renewed recession – that contribution is all the more important.

As the international economic environment is rather complicated, B&R will involve enormous investments, long construction cycles and slow payback, with various risks and challenges. Many projects are well underway, however, from Indonesia to Central Asia, and more and more countries and regions are aligning with the B&R strategy and China’s commitment to mutual benefit.

The world’s two largest economies must lead globalization onto a track of fast progress, to further accentuate “development”, placing more emphasis on “the politics of distribution”, rather than on “the politics of production”.

A key federal committee has just blessed what would be the largest-ever Chinese overseas investment, the $43 billion takeover of the giant farm pesticide and seed corporation, Syngenta. In doing so, the U.S. government is showing acquiescence when issues of national security or key resources are off the table. However, it may also be taking a risk with American food safety.

Chinese concepts and wisdom about “win-win cooperation”, “new type of major-country relationship”, “community of common destiny of all mankind” and “new security concept” will surely contribute to the G20 in the development of solidarity and a partnership spirit.

China’s macro challenge: Stay problem-oriented and target-oriented, considerably alleviate the financing difficulty of the private enterprises, reduce excess capacity, foster a driving force for a new growth and stimulate private investment – all while speeding up supply-side structural reform.

As China assumes G20 leadership, the prospect of global “protectionism” is on the rise and the stakes could not be higher for cooperation and major structural reforms. Without continued investment and trade, secular stagnation in advanced economies and growth deceleration in emerging economies will continue to broaden.

The US should follow the historical trend of trade liberalization, abandon protectionism, and engage in non-discriminatory free trade. That is the only winning formula for its own and the rest of the world’s economic difficulties.