China Voice: Peace depends on constructive mindset, mutual respect
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E-mail Xinhua, January 30, 2013
In his Tuesday speech, Chinese leader Xi Jinping not only reiterated the country's long-term foreign strategy, but also elaborated on how realistic it will be to achieve.
China has always claimed that its development is peaceful, although some doubt how such a thing could be possible.
Chinese leaders have created a strategy that links the country's own fate with the world and tries to seek a common ground between the country's interests and that of the international community.
Clearly, the Chinese government thinks the country and the rest of the world share developmental interests. In past decades, China's fast economic growth has shown that global prosperity and stability represent an opportunity for China, while China's market and economic dynamics can benefit the world.
This is the kind of positive thinking that can lay a foundation for peace-oriented foreign policies.
However, as Xi explained in his speech, peace can only be realized mutually -- China is following a road of peaceful development and other countries should do the same.
Seeing the emergence of China as a chance or a challenge may determine the relationship between China and the rest of the world.
Some have responded sharply to Xi's statement, as he declared that China will not compromise when it comes to its core interests.
But Xi's statement was far from being a hardline declaration. It showed that peaceful development is indeed a working strategy that not only has a blueprint and a goal, but also a bottom line.
Professor Jin Canrong from the School of International Studies at Renmin University interpreted China's core interests as sovereignty, territorial integrity, development interests and the stability of its system.
The discussion of a peaceful development concept by members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Political Bureau, the country's top decision-making body, demonstrates that the CPC is willing to replace empty talk with actual thought.
As China's leaders have stated, Chinese are ideologically opposed to war due to wartime atrocities that occurred in the 20th century.
Practically, the country's main focus is to build a moderately prosperous society, as well as a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious.
When there are problems in the country's border areas, it is right to reiterate the importance of following a path of peaceful development and to urge other countries to do the same. Endi
