What rivets the world most at China's two sessions

BEIJING - As China opens the annual sessions of its top political advisory body and top legislature this week, the whole world is poring over the two Chinese events that also bear global significance.

At the focus of the glaring international spotlight are China's economic restructuring, economic growth, peaceful development and defense posture, showed a recent series of Xinhua interviews with scholars, researchers and business leaders from different countries.

Economic Restructuring

In the aftermath of the latest global financial crisis, which exposed an alarming bevy of defects and malpractices in the world economy, restructuring has become the keyword in the global economic recovery.

Against such a backdrop, delegates to China's upcoming two sessions will thrash out the 12th Five-Year Plan to guide the 2011-2015 development of the world's largest developing country.

"This year is the opening year of China's 12th Five-Year Plan, and the most important element of the grand plan is to transform the pattern of economic development," said Chen Kang, a professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore.

Priorities of China's economic restructuring include boosting domestic demand, improving people's livelihood, promoting scientific and technological innovation, optimizing industrial mix and accelerating equal provision of basic public services.

Given China's rising status in the global economic architecture, its transformation efforts are widely believed to bring more benefits and opportunities to the entire world.

Noting that China does need to expand internal demand, Mark Williams, a China analyst at the London-based economic research consultancy of Capital Economics, stressed that such an effort by China will influence not only Chinese consumers but those in Europe and the United States.

"Because our economies are not so well at the moment, if China is successful in rebalancing its own economy, that would also help the rest of us," he added.

"What has been happening up to now has been... building the reserves to make the country develop, but it is what is going to happen in the next five years that will be the real evidence of the new China," said Stephen Perry, chairman of London Export Corporation and the 48 Group Club.

Economic Growth

Such confidence in China's future growth stems from China's steady and relatively rapid economic development over the recent decades and its outstanding performance in countering the Great Depression-like global financial catastrophe and economic meltdown.

By mapping out this year's national economic development goals, China's upcoming two sessions will strengthen the confidence needed to shore up the global economic recovery, which many cautioned is still fragile.

It will remain an important engine for the global economic growth that the Chinese economy maintains rapid development in the future, said Norbert Walter, a former chief economist of the Deutsche Bank.

China will enlarge its investment in other areas of the world, and its strategic significance to Asia's and Africa's regional economic development will be highly appreciated, he added.

Peaceful Development

Besides steering China's economic development forward, the two sessions will also elucidate China's foreign policy once again to the international community, reaffirming the country's commitment to peaceful development and its sincerity in pursuing common prosperity with other countries.

As a heavy-weight player in world economy and politics, China frequently interacts with the international community, and its adherence to peaceful development and readiness to share due responsibilities have stricken responsive chords with many across the globe.

China's peaceful development means that it integrates into the world in a peaceful way and reaches a tacit understanding with other countries, big or small, said Thomas Renard, a research fellow at the renowned Belgian think tank of Royal Institute for International Relations.

"To some extent, China has already made it," he added.

This view was echoed by Pierre Picquart, a China expert from the University of Paris, who pointed out that China will not change its policy of peaceful development although its national power is growing.

China, he said, will continue to enhance dialogue and cooperation with other countries, regions and international organizations while promoting world multi-polarization.

Beijing's cooperative outreach has enjoyed particularly popular support among the adjacent Southeast Asian countries, which regard their giant neighbor as a trustworthy partner.

With their economies embracing an increasingly strong mutual complementarity, relations between China and Southeast Asian countries have maintained sound development, said Han Tan Juan, a senior Singaporean commentator.

"China's policy of peaceful development has already won support of most countries," including both developing and developed ones, said Professor Yakov Berger of the Far East Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "So China's peaceful development gives a chance to all people."

Defense Posture

China's adherence to peaceful development can also be sensed in its defense policy, which is defensive in nature and dedicated to peace.

The posture of the Chinese military has recently fallen victim to unfounded suspicions and accusations fabricated by a handful of Western media which cited China's reasonable increase in military spending to stir up the "China threat."

During the two sessions, China will demonstrate to the world yet again its unremitting commitment to world peace, reassuring the international community that its development poses no threat to any other country.

China's current military modernization efforts, said Picquart of the University of Paris, are aimed principally at maintaining social stability and safeguarding economic growth.

Noting that China has always been a peace-loving country in history, he stressed that the Chinese military is a defensive force and that its modernization will eventually contribute to world peace.

The "China threat" claim was also rejected by Gennady Chufrin, a China expert at Moscow's Institute of World Economy and International Relations, who dubbed the slander an exaggerated distortion.

"Chinese national interests, for at least 50 years ahead, lie in securing the country's sustainable development," he said. "These plans require adequate protection, which is not the same as aggression."

China has not been involved in any armed conflict around the world, and "Beijing actively tries to defuse tensions by means of negotiations," the Russian professor stressed.

"The growth of Chinese military might has been a factor of pacification rather than tension, for the reasons already mentioned: Beijing's economical development plans must be nestled in a peaceful environment," Chufrin said.

The Fourth Session of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference is set to start on Thursday, two days before the Fourth Session of the 11th National People's Congress opens. Both of the week-long events take place in Beijing.