Kicked off on Friday, the Shanghai Forum 2026 gathers experts from more than 50 countries and regions to navigate shifting global power dynamics and explore shared development.
With nearly 400 participants, the three-day forum focuses on three pillar topics: AI and global governance, major-power relations and regional governance, and sustainable development with a shared future.
Featuring 16 high-level sub-forums and prominent speakers, including former United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon, this year’s event highlights the dynamics among global major powers and its impact.
One of the participants, Enrico Letta from IE University, a prominent Spanish institute, reiterated the shared responsibility between China and Europe against traditional and non-traditional challenges, with climate change as a priority.
"China and Europe have great responsibility to restore trust and find cooperative and multilateral methods, first of all, to face climate change. Agreements against climate change were exactly based on China and European Union cooperation. The U.S. was there. Now the U.S. is out because Trump decided to withdraw. I think it was a very bad choice. But Europe and China, we have to work together. We hope the U.S. will change minds, but we have to work together," said Letta, who is the dean of the School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs of the university.
On the other side, scholars warned that the U.S. attempt to disengage and decouple from China, especially regarding science and technology researches, might have negative impacts on itself as well as the rest of the international community.
"We are going to see a kind of two parallel systems in U.S. and in China, and each will pursue its own research agenda without much engagement and cooperation. So that is going to be the case for a long time to come. One day, maybe the U.S. policy makers [would] wake up and realize that is a big loss for the U.S. But before that, there will be a long period of disengagement and decoupling between two sides. That is bad for both countries and also for the rest of the world, because after all, China and the U.S. are the two major countries that make a big contribution to the progress in science and technology worldwide," said Wu Xinbo, executive dean of the Institute of International Studies under the Fudan University in Shanghai.
Shanghai Forum seeks shared development amid shifting global power dynamics
