China committed to peaceful development, harmonious world

BEIJING—Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan reiterated China’s commitment to its peaceful development and harmonious world strategies at an international seminar in Beijing on Thursday.
Addressing the opening ceremony of the seminar, Tang cited Chinese President Hu Jintao’s pledge at the the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in mid October that China would follow the path of peaceful development and promote the building of a harmonious world of durable peace and common prosperity.
Tang said following the path of peaceful development means China is committed to building socialism with distinctive Chinese features, and it would uphold a peaceful international environment to develop itself and contribute more to world peace and common development through its own development. It means China will actively participate in economic globalization and regional cooperation while mainly relying on itself to achieve all-round, coordinated and sustainable development through reform and innovation. China will open itself wider to the outside world and promote cooperation of mutual benefit with all other countries, he said. It means China will never seek hegemony or external expansion and will remain a staunch force for world peace and common development.
He said the path of peaceful development is fully consistent with China’s historical and cultural traditions, and in the common interests of China and the world. “In the 100-plus years after the Opium War in 1840, China was subjected to bullying and humiliation by foreign powers.... Having suffered from the scourge of wars, the Chinese people deeply cherish peace,” Tang said. The strategy of building a harmonious world was a major strategy and a new vision of the CPC and the Chinese government.
The strategy calls for promoting enduring peace, common prosperity and harmonious co-existence between man and nature, and the principle that enduring peace would promote common prosperity in the world and help settle global issues and, in turn, help realize enduring peace, he said. This new vision calls on the international community to respect each other in politics; make decisions based on consultation on an equal footing; make concerted efforts to promote democracy in international relations, in economy; cooperate with each other; draw on each other’s strengths and work together to ensure balanced progress in economic globalization so that we can all benefit from it; learn from each other’s cultures; seek common ground while shelving differences; respect the diversity of civilizations and make joint efforts to advance human civilization; and to trust each other, strengthen cooperation, settle disputes through peaceful means, and work together to uphold world peace and stability, said Tang.
Before the seminar, Tang met with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who was invited to attend the seminar and gave a speech. Schroeder hailed the sound development of the China-Germany relationship, saying the core issue in the development of such relationship was the adherence to the one-China policy. “The Chinese people have been supporting the reunification of Germany, therefore, in the eyes of the German people, they should also support China’s reunification cause,” said Schroeder. He said current German Chancellor Angela Merkel had said it was correct to stick to the one-China policy and he believed Merkel would continue to do so.
Former U.S. Ambassador to China J. Stapleton Roy said the strategies showed the “enormous wisdom” of Chinese leaders in explicitly connecting a peaceful international environment with China’s modernization objectives. “China’s commitment to a strategy, a policy of peaceful development, in my judgement, represents an enormous positive contribution to efforts to create a more harmonious world. The problems we have are very severe, and we need wise and skillful leaders to manage them. But in my judgement they are manageable,” said Roy. Former Secretary-General of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party Kato Koichi also spoke, saying the 21st Century was the “century of Asia”, and the bright future of Asia will depend on whether major countries like China, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Indiacould cooperate sincerely.—Xinhua