英文实录

金刻羽：You have been very busy working with your institute on advising governments, rallying governments, thinking about strategies to fight the global pandemic. So I'm particularly interested in three aspects of your vision. First is technology, you have urged governments to embrace the levers of technology tofight the pandemic. Would you elaborate on this first?

BLAIR：We've really, for our institute, repurposed everything towards COVID, both working on what the right response should be of governments, like my own in the UK, but also working in Africa, in the MiddleEast, and other countries around the world.

And one of the things that has struck us particularly is how important it is for the countries to understand that we are living through a technology revolution. What's happened with COVID is that all those changes that were there before COVID are there now, but with greater acceleration, and greater intensification. So it's even more important, I think, now, for countries to understand what technological change can do for them. And that's what we've learned during the course of COVID.

For example, in the way we're having this discussion now, because people have shifted to doing online working and in large number, we've learnedthrough some of the innovations during the course of COVID, where we've had to accelerate the development of rapid test, the rapeutics, vaccines, of course. But I think it's got a far wider implication. And countries are beginning to understand, for example, in healthcare, the importance of good data, the importance of using that data. So, in my view, the single biggest challenge for politics in the world today, is to understand this technology revolution,master it, and harness it.

金刻羽：Absolutely, let me share a little bit about our experience using technology in China, it's been actually tremendous policy tool for not only fighting the pandemic from a public health perspective, but also helping with the economic and financial recovery. And as you know, China's technological ecosystem is vast and deep. And, you know, this crisis, it's been so asymmetricin hitting different groups of people, And the optimal response is to get the specific policies to specific groups, we call it precision targeting. Technology can do that. We've been giving medical insurance for healthworkers, lowering the cost of capital for exporting firms, reducing the costfor logistics companies, you know, tailoring the policies for different groups.And you can do that with technology.

And I feel that there is so much that China can share in terms of its experience, in terms of that capacity with the rest of the world. you've worked with African countries where they've seen leap frogs in technology, that it's actually the advanced countries in the West, that's a little bit behind that they're not, you know, collectively using these tools, as you say, you know, using this pandemic as an opportunity to make that leap frog.

BLAIR：Yeah, I think I think this is this is True.And it's a big challenge for Western governments and policymakers. one of the things my institute works on is that in the Western countries, and indeed, many of the developing world countries, where in policy makers and change makers  sit in two different groups. So the people making public policy and the people changing the world, they're not in dialogue with each other. And one of our ambitions is to get people into that dialogue, and make people understand.

So for example, there's a huge challenge for the Western world today, because we are throwing everything at economic recovery. The support systems and the amount of money being spent on support during this pandemic is enormous. I mean, it's enormous. trillion dollars has been spent in support in Asia, in the West, monetary policy, fiscal policy is being completely reordered in order to try and get our way through this economic downturn. But at the same time, that could cause us enormous problems of in debtedness. And if for any reason, inflation came back in the system, then we would face real challenges. So one of the things we should be looking at is how do we cut cost? How do we manage that to make our services, public services, in healthcare, for example, much more efficient?

Technology is the way to do that. So technology, if we harness this revolution, in the right way, it gives us the opportunity to reorder the expenditures of the state and the interaction of the citizens with the state. So this is, to me, this is just a fundamental consequence. And I think the issue, certainly the challenge for Western politics now, is can it get back to a leadership that's thinking long term, taking decisions for the long term, whilst we operate within an environment politically, which pushes everything towards short term reactive policy?

And the challenge for Britain, post Brexit, is, we're going to have to create in our country, a really vibrant modern economy, in which you're attracting the best minds around the world, and in which your education system, particularly higher education, has to interact with the business sector, to produce, you know, technological innovation. And I think that in certain areas,for example, biotech, we're well placed to do that. But it's going to require big structural change to make sure we are fully competitive.

金刻羽：You mentioned global leadership. Now, that's a second aspect of your vision that you've been very outspoken about. Tell me why, when the world needs it the most, are we not seeing global coordination and global leadership? Is this incapacity? Or is it simply a lack of will?

BLAIR：I think it's, it's more of a lack of will? Yeah. Because the need is completely obvious. And I've never come across an issue politically, which touches everybody. this pandemics touched everybody. Everybody has had to change their way of living and working and interacting with others, including their own families resulted. So it's inevitable that the political leaders should look first at the situation in their own countries. That's a given.

But it is also so obvious that since it's a global pandemic, and since we all face the same basic challenges, we may deal with it differently, but the challenges are essentially the same. How do you stop the disease spreading, control it, and eradicate it? It's incredible to me that there has not been more global coordination over things like, how you develop the most effective testing capability, rapid tests, about how you accelerate the production, distribution of therapeutics and vaccines, and about how you make sure that you're sharing best practice, how you share data on the disease. Now, there has been certain amount of cooperation. But it's been largely on a basis that is your people just getting together, called clinicians working together and sharing protocolsand so on. And, you know, certainly initiatives like the COVAX Initiativeto getvaccines out to the developing world.

But you look in vain for a big, you know, global leadership push to say, okay, whatever our differences around, you know, 50 other things, onthese things, we can cooperate together. We just practicing, for example, because in our country, certainly, it might be rapid testing is an essential part of controlling the disease. Supposing we got together as countries, main countries at the beginning of this crisis, and said, we're going to incentivize the development of rapid, easy to use on the spot tests, we could probably shorten the period for the development of these tests by several months. I don'tunderstand why we haven't done it.

金刻羽：So what do you think, what in your view, are some of the fundamental causes of this lack of global leadership and coordination? And also, of course, China, China could play a big role here and in to some extent it has. But there could be more coordination. So tell me, why do you think that is?

BLAIR：I think you've got two basic challenges to overcome. One is that many countries, literally America, very become very introspective, focused on their own internal affairs. And then secondly, you know, frankly the relationship between the US and China, West and China, you would agree. is a big challenge, because it's going to require to repair this will require changes from both sides. And it's, it's not going to be easy. Now, what I've been trying to say my institute paper on this in recent months, is that, first of all, we've got to recognize we are in a new world in which the power of China has now risen, it's evident, it's obvious. And the power of China and its position in the world as a major world leader, is inevitable and right. It should be, both for reasons of size, history and economy and so on. The question, though, is, obviously is that rise of China's happened, These changes on the China side, the speech changes on the west side, and there's now much more confrontational atmosphere.

Now, I think there's no point to being you know, naive about this. I think this would be true, by the way, irrespective happens in the American presidential election, there are going to be areas of genuine confrontation. And, and those areas are clear that pretty well known to bothsides and, that confrontation is important that it doesn't get out of hand, but it's going to be real.

Secondly, there will be areas of competition. And technology is probably one of them in which there will be a real sense of China and the Westcompeting. You know, the next generation of technological innovation is going to be something of a race, and it will be highly competitive. So those areas of computation competition, they're clear.