Path for peace and prosperity

It is the way that fits China's national conditions and makes it possible for all countries to realize common prosperity

While human society is now able to generate abundant material wealth, it still struggles to effectively address urgent global challenges. China's path of peaceful development, with its emphasis on inclusiveness and cooperation, has become a major theoretical foundation for global governance. Below are viewpoints on the importance of China's peaceful development from Yang Jiemian, president of Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, Zhang Youwen, director of the World Economy Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and Wu Xinbo, Center of American Studies, Fudan University.

Yang Jiemian:

After 30 years of rapid development, China is now facing economic, social and cultural challenges, which will necessitate deeper reforms for a stable social environment. Meanwhile, in developed nations, chaos and disorder have continued to grow, revealing a deep-rooted crisis in the Western system, while in North Africa and West Asia, there have been street revolutions and armed struggles.

Experiences at home and abroad over the last 30 years have proved that stability comes before everything else, as economic development can only prosper in a peaceful and stable environment and a country can only fully develop when it takes its specific national conditions into account.

Some Western countries view China's growth in national strength as a threat to the established international order and believe it will inevitably lead to war and turbulence. But the opposite is true. China will stick to its chosen path of peaceful development and follow an independent and peaceful diplomatic route.

To effectively combat global challenges such as the financial crisis, terrorism, energy resources security, arms proliferation, epidemic diseases and natural disasters, all countries must pool their strength and wisdom.

As it has gained strength, China has contributed, through consultation and cooperation with the international community, to the rise of the G20, the restructuring of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the steady progress of regional cooperation. More importantly, it has stabilized the international system onto a more equitable and rational track.

China's philosophy of peaceful development has therefore transformed the international system, while its practice of peaceful development has added new momentum to this transformation.

Zhang Youwen:

A chief player in the world economic system, China has designed its own strategies and policies concerning economic development. It has always stressed the importance of regional economic development through neighborly cooperation and has facilitated trade and investment liberalization by signing agreements with various countries on free trade, investment protection, and avoidance of double taxation. It has also joined global efforts to break the energy and resource bottleneck of development by stepping up efforts to transform its traditional production and consumption mode; reformed its export system and emphasized two-way trade and investment; tried its utmost to develop new growth drivers at home and to enlarge its market space to alleviate the competitive pressure on the traditional world market; and has maintained its high-speed growth and stabilized its exchange rate to safeguard world economic stability.

While maintaining its high-speed growth, China has included the world into its own development, which is an embodiment of the development philosophy of a responsible big power and a demonstration of the internal link between its own development mode and the common prosperity of the world as a whole.

China has joined the world community in efforts to combat crises through coordination of macro policies; and given help to countries in crisis by multiplying its international procurement and imports. China has therefore contributed to the stability of the world economic system and the growth of the world economy in a comprehensive way.

Only through inclusive development can all countries realize common prosperity, jointly meet challenges in development, and enjoy common security by seeking common grounds. In this sense, inclusive development constitutes one part of the outlook on peaceful development.

Wu Xinbo:

China believes that instead of challenging the international order or following the traditional path of other countries, it is possible for a country to promote its own development through international competition in an orderly way, and through promotion of mutual benefit and reciprocity in an era of economic globalization.

Differences and disputes are normal in international relations. How to solve them, however, is a test of the political wisdom of individual countries. China favors solving disputes through peaceful means. It strives to bridge differences through dialogue and negotiation rather than through confrontation. If the time is not yet right for the settlement of a dispute, China would rather shelve it until the right time comes, as it has done in the settlement of territorial and marine disputes with its neighbors. China also seeks to settle disputes in an inclusive way. This calls for compromise, tolerance and creative thinking.

China's path of peaceful development may seem to be an unprecedented choice. In actuality, it is a natural product of China's traditional wisdom.

(China Daily 10/26/2011 page8)