FRANKFURT, April 21 (Xinhua) -- To find solutions to worldwide crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, attention should be given to international cooperation, not the blame gaming, said financial experts from Germany and China on Tuesday.
"We are confronted with a worldwide crisis, but for the first time, we don't see worldwide and global answers to it," said Thorsten Giehler, country director at German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ).
Giehler made the remarks during an online seminar Tuesday organized by Sino-German Center of Finance and Economics of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, in which panelists from China and Germany discussed exit strategies from the coronavirus pandemic with a focus on the economic perspective.
Giehler said China has been a responsible player and investor in stabilizing the world economy since the 2008 financial crisis. In the current crisis, there is some blame-gaming targeting China inside the European Union (EU), he said.
Giehler hoped that Germany, after assuming the presidency in the EU Council in July, can play an important role in creating incentives to harmonizing European policies that can turn away from the blame game and enter a situation "where we can face a global crisis with global answers," he said.
Niels Tomm, Co-CEO of China Europe International Exchange (CEINEX) in Frankfurt, a signature project of the German and Shanghai stock exchanges, also stressed the importance of international cooperation.
He said it is not only the duty of the government, but also the duty of companies to develop new ideas and visions for how to achieve stronger cooperation together.
"Blame game is not the answer but cooperation is," he added.
One of global challenges that the pandemic has caused is volatility on the financial markets. Tomm pointed out that the Chinese benchmark index did not see a drop as steep as other similar benchmarks in Europe and the United States during the crisis, and it is further stabilizing.
"The reforms in the last years have really paid off," he said.
Tomm also noted that the cautious approach by the Chinese government to open up the financial markets might have acted as a "safety cushion", and at the same time, it is promising to see that the progress of opening up the market is still continuing in China despite the challenge from the crisis.
For European banks that have been threatened by low profitability even before the onset of the pandemic, the crisis might be an opportunity to accelerate the trend of digitalization that is very much needed in the sector, according to Liang Jian, executive board member and head of China desk from Hauck & Aufhaeuser, a German private bank.
European banks could learn from their Chinese peers in embracing digitalization, both at the front-end in dealing with customers and at the back-end in upgrading the core bank systems, Liang said. Enditem
