Five years ago, in September 2021, at the general debate of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, President Xi Jinping announced the Global Development Initiative.

It was the first of the four strategic initiatives China has put forward, the others being the Global Security Initiative, Global Civilization Initiative and Global Governance Initiative.

Together they present China's vision of a community with a shared future.

Back in 2021, the world was still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and from the subsequent economic and social hardships, distortions and uncertainties.

Under those difficult circumstances, many nations around the world hoped that the worst times were already behind them and that a realistic task for the coming years was to return to stable economic growth based on globalization.

With its focus on accelerating the implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals and shifting global attention from fighting COVID-19 back to core development issues, the Global Development Initiative reflected these hopes.

Regretfully, the international situation since the pandemic has been characterized by regional conflicts, an arms race and intensifying confrontation between major powers. The future of globalization has been challenged by unilateral tariffs, economic sanctions and the steady erosion of multilateralism.

With only four and a half years left till the end of 2030, significant progress has been tracked in implementing only one-third of the SDGs.

The progress is much slower than planned in almost half of the goals, while there has been regression rather than progress in the remaining goals.

Many former enthusiasts of SDGs have come to the conclusion that the idea of sustainable development should be put on a back-burner until better times emerge; that national security should have a higher priority over economic growth and that the name of the game in global politics for the time being is not prosperity, but survival.

This shift in priorities has been reflected in national budgets that favor defense spending over social and economic programs. The world is feverishly preparing, if not for a third world war, then at least for a long and extremely costly military-political standoff between major powers.

In 2021, global military spending amounted to slightly more than $2 trillion; in 2026 it might close or even exceed $3 trillion. If that trend were to continue, the total global defense budget could nearly double within the next 10 years, reaching $5-6 trillion a year by 2036.

Societies are growing accustomed to the idea that humanity will face a long period of low economic growth. After the pandemic, the average annual growth of the global economy constituted about 3.2 percent compared to 4.4 percent in the early 2000s.

The 2020s are likely to be the weakest decade for growth since the mid-20th century, and the preliminary forecasts for the 2030s are not bright either.

In many countries, living standards of generations to come will be lower, not higher than those of their parents and grandparents.

It is also considered self-evident today that the era of globalization is a thing of the past and that the world will be divided into several opposing regional blocs for the foreseeable future.

Each of the blocs will strive for development, but the fragmentation of the world economy, tariff wars, the collapse of global production chains and fierce competition in the field of new technologies will inevitably cause a further slowdown in economic growth and social progress.

These are widely regarded as the sobering realities of our times. However, do they really mean that the tenets and practical suggestions of the Global Development Initiative should be put on hold?

Not at all. There can be no security without development. When you start to think about how stable and reliable settlements of the conflicts in places such as Gaza, Ukraine, the Persian Gulf or the Sahel region in Africa can be attained, you invariably run into one and the same problem — how to convert the destructive energy of conflict into the creative energy of development. There can be no long-term development without security, but there can be no sustainable security without development.

It is also clear that one cannot reduce wars, the arms race and geopolitical confrontation without simultaneously reducing protectionism, unilateral trade restrictions, disruptive financial sanctions and many other manifestations of national economic egotism and shortsightedness.

That means the Global Development Initiative is even more relevant today than it was five years ago. Since 2021, the West has proved unable to offer any intelligible alternative to the ideas contained in the Global Development Initiative.

The US administration's attempts to address the development agenda through creating ad hoc private-public mechanisms — such as the Board of Peace for the Gaza Strip — have demonstrated very limited effect and are unlikely to constitute a solid foundation for dealing with development needs even in a small place such as Gaza, let alone set a model for the rest of the world.

It should also be noted that since 2021 China has been one of the world's leading practitioners in pursuit of the SDGs, including poverty elimination, improved public health and the transition to green energy, where it is either on track or ahead of schedule. Of course, the nation has its own bottlenecks and outstanding issues, but there is no doubt that China will meet most of its SDG targets by 2030.

Its contribution to SDGs on a global level should not be underestimated either: for instance, it now accounts for 70 percent of the world's wind power equipment supplies and for 80 percent of the global solar photovoltaic module shipments.

China's exports of these help to reduce the global CO2 emissions by no less than a billion tons a year.

The implementation of the Global Development Initiative is indispensable for global sustainability. Recent years have only confirmed its importance.

If the global development agenda is not properly addressed, everything else — including international security — will remain on shaky ground.

The author is a member and former director general of the Russian International Affairs Council.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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