On January 12, Ambassador Dai Qingli published an article at the Nassau Guardian titled“Chinese wisdom and action for a better world” which highlights the outcomes of the Central Conference on Work Related to Foreign Affairs held in Beijing recently. The article runs as follows:
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s address at the recently held Central Conference on Foreign Affairs has provided major insights into how China sees the world and its place in it and proposes to conduct its foreign policy in the years to come.
Our world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation, with unprecedented, accelerating changes unfolding as never before.
In the global economic sphere, rising protectionist tendencies in the name of decoupling and de-risking are creating distortions in global trade and investment and disruptions in the global supply chains, weighing down global economic recovery.
Hot wars and conflicts rage unabated, from Ukraine to the Gaza strip. Geopolitical tensions caused by attempts at strategic competition are fueling fears about a return to a new Cold War.
Global challenges, from the pandemic to food, energy and debt crisis, from climate change to trans-national crimes, are increasingly straining existing global governance frameworks and making it difficult for any country to fend for itself.
At the same time, one of the defining features of our era has been the collective rise and new awakening of the Global South. Yet, due in part to covid, another 100 million people across the world have sunk back to poverty. The global south are still struggling to explore their path to modernization and to increase their voice and representation in global governance.
In the past decade and more of the new era, China has braved heavy storms and choppy waters in its foreign relations and gained historic achievements and valuable experience in executing its foreign policy. China has become a responsible major country with rising international influence, growing capacity to steer events, and increasing moral appeal.
An increasingly confident China sees its development as endowed with new strategic opportunities, and its foreign relations have entered a new stage where it is positioned to achieve much more.
In the years ahead, China’s foreign policy will always maintain a domestic focus. It will remain geared towards firmly safeguarding its sovereignty, security and development interests, creating a more favorable international environment and providing more solid strategic support for its socialist modernization and rejuvenation.
At the same time, faced with the growing deficit of peace, development and global governance, China’s answer has been to identify the building of a community with a shared future for humankind as the core theme and lofty goal of its foreign policy.
The community with a shared future conception reflects the Chinese worldview, perception of order, and values. We see countries in the world as increasingly forging a community of intertwined interests, common challenges, shared responsibilities and interconnected destinies.
Rather than seeking global hegemony, China would much prefer unity over divisions, cooperation over conflict, common progress over selfish pursuits and working together to make the world a better place for all.
President Xi’s analogy for this is that rather than struggling to row 190 boats in the perilous sea, countries are all in one big ship together. Only by rowing in unity can they overcome the storm.
Over the past decade, the concept of building a community with a shared future has increasingly developed from a Chinese initiative to an international consensus, from a promising vision to substantive actions, and from a proposition to a full-fledged system. It has been included in UN General Assembly resolutions for seven consecutive years and adopted in China’s relations with different countries and regions and covering various areas.
Specifically, building such a global community means that countries should work to deliver peace, security and prosperity for all, make the world an open and inclusive place, and leave a clean and beautiful environment to posterity.
China has practiced what it preached. China rejects zero-sum game and major-power competition and worked to stabilize China-US relations from further deterioration. President Xi reiterated in his recent meeting with President Joseph Biden in San Francisco that the right way forward for both countries remains to follow the principles of mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation.
President Biden reaffirmed the commitments he made and stated that the United States does not seek to contain or suppress China’s development or to decouple with China, and does not support “Taiwan independence”.
China has consistently stood on the side of peace, and made active efforts for resuming peace talks, no matter in Ukraine or Palestine, Korean Peninsula or the larger Middle East. China has consistently advocated respect for the sovereignty of all countries, and promoted the two-state solution in the Palestine-Israel conflict.
China’s success in facilitating the restoration of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran set off a “wave of reconciliation” across the Middle East, a victory for patient diplomacy.
China has continued to provide enduring impetus for common development.
The Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF), held in Beijing last year and attended by over 10,000 delegates from 151 countries and 41 international organizations, produced 458 important outcomes and US$97.2 billion worth of cooperation agreements.
Over the past year, China’s Global Development Initiative (GDI) , which is aimed at supporting the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goals, implemented more than 200 cooperation projects. The US$4 billion Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund has been put into use.
In terms of its relations with Latin America and the Caribbean, last year China received over 10 leaders from regional countries. China will make use of this year’s G20 and APEC summits, both to be held in Latin America, to further upgrade relations with the region.
At the end of the day, climate change is probably the best illustration of China’s global community concept. Faced with this existential crisis, China has chosen to accommodate the development needs of other countries while promoting its own and align the interests of the Chinese people with those of the world.
As a major developing country with an energy structure traditionally tilted to fossil fuel, China hasmade relentless efforts to cut carbon emissions, reducing carbon intensity by over 26% in the past decade, consistently over-fulfilling its targets.
China has been the largest investor in the world in solar and wind energy for ten years, making renewable energy more accessible and affordable to the whole world. China pledged to move from carbon peaking to carbon neutrality in 30 years, much shorter than industrialized nations.
China has welcomed and supported the launch of the Loss and Damage Fund. At the recent COP 28, developed countries are called on to take the lead to provide financial resources for the Fund in line with common but differentiated responsibilities.
China has been helping fellow developing countries since 2013 through its "Green Belt and Road initiative” and the South-South Cooperation Fund to Address Climate Change. China has worked with 100 plus countries and regions on green energy projects, signed 46 South-South cooperation agreements with 39 countries, and built 3 low-carbon demonstration zones, 70 mitigation and adaptation projects, and 3 early warning projects. It has trained more than 2,300 officials and technicians from 106 countries.
For the global community to work well for all, China calls for an equal and orderly multipolar world and a beneficial and inclusive economic globalization. Our world will be a much better place if all countries, regardless of size, are treated as equals, and work together in true multilateralism and for common progress. This is a worthwhile endeavor and we hope more will be ready to shoulder this responsibility of our times.