Xiangshan Forum: Dialogue for continuing world peace

The 11th Beijing Xiangshan Forum is being held from Thursday to Saturday. Its enormously important theme of "Promoting Peace for a Shared Future" is an extremely timely opportunity to bring the Asia-Pacific and global majority community for dialogue and discussion to map the path to continuing world peace, progress and prosperity through common and indivisible security.

With 500 delegates from more than 100 countries and international organizations attending, and over 200 experts and scholars from home and abroad, exchanging analyses and views on how the world can move forward with the global peace agenda, and information from these discussions spreading and reverberating across the world's traditional and new media, mankind's awareness about the need for peace action will certainly be enhanced.

An atmosphere of tension and conflict has been rising in regions around the world where the collective West led by the United States has been sowing strategic turmoil. It is no secret that the conflicts raging in the Eastern European and West Asian fronts, in Ukraine and Gaza, are workings of US proxy wars. It is also no secret, especially to us in the Philippines and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, that the US seeks to spread this strategy of tension to Asia.

The malevolent intentions of the Merchants of War could not be hidden from the global public in the May 31 to June 2 convening of the 21st Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore, an annual event sponsored by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, which has been described by many independent experts as a platform to stir up issues that create tension and conflict in Asia, as well as to bash China.

The 21st Shangri-La Dialogue was clearly made into a platform to project the US campaign to vilify China by highlighting the US' willing stooge in Asia today, Philippine President Marcos, as the keynote speaker of the event to expound on the US-scripted South China Sea grumblings that ASEAN and China have agreed to resolve respectfully and peacefully through dialogue and win-win strategies.

The Philippines is being dragged into the next proxy war the US is setting the stage for, imposing on the country the installation of intermediate-and medium-range missile launchers that have caused even Russia to take notice and express concern.

In reaction, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, "The implementation by the Americans of plans to deploy ground-based medium- and shorter-range missiles will not remain without our reaction."

The issue of peace is indeed a vital concern of the Philippines today and we look forward to the exchange of ideas and views on the promotion of peace in our region and in the world at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum, as well as to the visionary leadership for global peace of China as set forth in the Global Security Initiative, proposed by President Xi Jinping, to lay the foundation of world peace in this our Asian Century.

The Beijing Xiangshan Forum will highlight China's peacemaking role in global politics today, demonstrated in many breakthrough negotiations brokered by China between contending nations such as restoring the amicable relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, keeping the lines of communication open between Ukraine and Russia, paving the way to the unity of Palestinian parties prepping for a two-state solution, and innumerable other peace initiatives.

With the 11th Beijing Xiangshan Forum, China provides a platform for the world to talk inclusively about the ways to achieve world peace amid the myriad challenges placed in the path of common understanding, common and indivisible security among all nations. It will definitely present a clear alternative that is bright, hopeful and positive for global harmony in contrast to the pessimistic outlook the Shangri-La Dialogue presented.

The author is founder of the Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies Institute. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.