Cooperation, competition can coexist in new multipolar world: WEF President

The world is moving towards a more multipolar order with the emergence of the Global South but despite fierce competition among nations, there is still room for collaboration as countries share many common interests, according to the president of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Speaking on the sidelines of the 2025 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting, which commenced in Davos, Switzerland on Monday, WEF President and CEO Borge Brende told the China Global Television Network (CGTN) that cooperation and competition among countries can still coexist, even as the traditional world order undergoes a period of change.

"I think we have to be 'realpolitikal' in the sense that in the world order that we had post-Cold War for the last more than 30 years, it was more of a win-win thinking -- what is good for you is good for us. We are now moving into a new world order that is more multipolar, but also is more about each country's self-interest," he said.

While noting the world's top two economies of China and the United States continue to be the main economic forces, Brende said that the rise of developing countries means there is a greater need for all nations to cooperate as they each aspire to their development goals.

"China and the U.S. is still almost 50 percent of the global economy together. The U.S. probably has more than 45 percent of the overall military power and capacity in the world. But we're moving more into a multipolar world because there's a lot of emerging economies. You have the Global South, too. But we will also need, in that new world order, to collaborate because there are areas of so much common interest," he said.

As U.S. President Donald Trump was sworn in to start his second term in office on Monday, Brende acknowledged there will be competition across a number of fields, especially in new technologies, but said that the recent call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump -- during which Xi stressed the two sides share common interests and have broad space for cooperation -- shows that both countries recognize the importance of working together.

"There are areas where countries will compete fiercely. I think on the new technologies, you will see strong competition between China and the U.S. as the two leading powers on the technology side, on artificial intelligence, on the Internet of Things, also when it comes to digital trade. But even in a situation with strong competition that I think will be there -- because both of these countries know that the country on top of the new technologies will probably be the most prosperous country also -- even in such a situation, I think what we saw with the call between President Trump and President Xi Jinping is that they both realize that there are common interests," said Brende.

The five-day WEF Annual Meeting in Davos is themed "Collaboration for the Intelligent Age,"and is bringing together nearly 3,000 participants from various regions and industries, with a call for greater cooperation amid global uncertainty.

Cooperation, competition can coexist in new multipolar world: WEF President

China's Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO), a high-altitude cosmic ray observatory in Sichuan Province, is pushing the boundaries of astrophysics by bringing humanity closer to answering the century-long question of the origins of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

Completed in 2021, LHAASO sprawls across an area the size of 190 football fields. It is the world’s highest-altitude, largest-scale, and most sensitive observatory for detecting cosmic ray particles as they enter Earth’s atmosphere.

The project traces back two decades, when physicist Cao Zhen envisioned China taking a decisive role in this frontier of science.

"Each particle has the energy much higher than what we can produce on Earth. We don't know where it was produced. This is the fascinating question that has bothered people for 100 years already. First of all, (we) go to the high altitude -- the higher [you go], the less the influence from the atmosphere. And then we decided to build such a large-scale experiment: the larger, you get more cosmic rays," said Cao Zhen, chief scientist at LHAASO and a researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

LHAASO functions as a giant set of "eyes" -- detectors that track cosmic ray particles invisible to the human eye. At its core lies a warehouse the size of 2.5 National Aquatic Centers, housing the world's most sensitive gamma-ray telescope.

Surrounding it are raised mounds -- muon detectors engineered to absorb photons and electrons while allowing only highly penetrating muons to pass through. Scattered among them, 18 blue, container-shaped telescopes complete the vast array.

Despite the thin atmosphere at an altitude of over 4,400 meters, China completed the construction of LHAASO in under five years, showcasing a remarkable feat of human endurance.

"Some of our detectors work perfectly fine in the lab, but they might malfunction when installed here because of the high-altitude environment. During the day, with the sun, the humidity is only about 20 to 30 percent, but at night it rises rapidly, reaching 100 percent. In addition, the detectors are also affected by temperature, wind, and extreme weather," said Wang Yudong, a researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics.

The effort quickly began to yield results. In 2020, even before the observatory was fully completed, scientists using LHAASO's partial array identified 12 ultra-high-energy gamma-ray sources. Two years later, in October 2022, the facility captured an extraordinary event: a millennial gamma-ray burst, a dazzling "cosmic firework" triggered by the collapse of a massive star some two billion years ago.

LHAASO is but one of 77 mega-science infrastructures now operating across China. Over the past five years, these facilities have propelled the country to the forefront of high-impact publications and patent applications, unraveling cosmic mysteries, advancing core technologies, and driving industrial progress along the way.

China's LHAASO edges closer to solving cosmic ray mystery