For the 2024 World Youth Festival in Sochi, I worked with a group of young experts from around the world on a report titled “Charting the 2040: Younger Generation Insight on the World in the Making”. My contributions are mainly in the ‘Values in 2040’ chapter. At the WYF Valdai Club youth conference, I received many comments and related questions. These interactions have made it possible for me to delve deeper into this topic and refine my insights.
The discussion about global transformation is broadly divided into two paths: one involves the shift of the current world order towards a multicentric one, while the other encompasses the questioning or denial of the modernisation process, predominantly at the national social level.
Modernisation itself is accompanied by risks and destruction, yet the undeniable benefits it brings to human society, such as improvements in the education system, medical care, urbanisation, and international trade, are immense and substantial. The by-products generated during modernisation are no reason for us to deny it. Although it is annoying, these risks need to be addressed by human society.
Several times in the report, I mentioned the foundations of the once-prevalent Western value system — a dynamic form of universalism grounded in particularities. What I mean is that the critique and questioning of the modernization process has, to some extent, spurred its ongoing evolution. This is also the way that the dynamic equilibrium of universalism functions.
During globalization, when the open and dynamic value system tends to become stagnant and monotonous, it encounters scrutiny and resistance around the world. Such a backlash is not rare for universalism, which has faced dissent throughout the history of globalization and on several occasions has succeeded in developing a new inclusive universal value system. In essence, the global transformation under the second path of discussion, modernisation, has never been stopped and will continue after 2040.
The other pivotal transformation in our discussion, the trend of world order towards multipolarity, is something which is taking place currently and will continue in the near future. We often conflate the two paths of global transformation. Indeed, criticisms of modernisation have paved the way for the current shift in the international order. However, I think there will come a time when not just Russia and China, but all nations will embrace the transformation of the world order, while aware that process of modernisation is irreversible. Human beings already have nuclear weapons, drones, spacecraft, artificial intelligence, and technology for utilizing renewable resources; we can't return to the point where none of that happened.