Not long ago, the medical team of Chinese Red Cross Foundation came to Kabul and took many Afghan children with Congenital Heart Disease to China for treatment. This project is a humanitarian rescue network co-established by the Chinese central and local government, humanitarian agencies, hospitals and enterprises. Many Chinese doctors voluntarily sacrificed their weekends and holidays to make surgeries for these Afghan children free of charge. They have saved more than 20 children last year, and will bring surprise and happiness for another more than 100 families this year.
A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure to call on H.E. President Ghani, and reiterated that China paid great attention to His Excellency’s assistance request to China and the international world regarding the severe drought in Afghanistan. The Chinese side decided to provide emergency food assistance and disaster-relief materials, for the sake of our tradition mutual help and assistance as well as our strategic cooperative partnership. China will also positively consider building a flood disaster early warning system for Afghanistan, providing technical support and training programs for the Afghan side to cope with natural disasters.
All these measures are demonstrations of Xi Jinping’s Thought on Diplomacy in Afghanistan as well as China-Afghanistan relations. The Thought is now guiding and promoting the China-Afghanistan relations and will bring concrete benefits for our two peoples.
Xi Jinping’s Thought on Diplomacy was formerly announced in the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs this June. It is an important component of Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, which was established in the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in last October. The Thought is a systematic theory, just like a mansion with ten pillars, which can be named as “ten insist on”:
First, insist on upholding the authority of the CPC Central Committee to strengthen centralized and unified Party leadership over external works, the main diplomatic power is in the hands of the CPC Central Committee.
Second, insist on pursuing China’s major-country diplomacy to accomplish the mission of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Third, insist on building a community with a shared future for mankind to promote world peace and common development.
Fourth, insist on enhancing strategic confidence to build a socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Fifth, insist on promoting the Belt and Road Initiative in accordance with the principle of achieving shared benefits through extensive consultation and joint contribution.
Sixth, insist on pursuing peaceful development featuring mutual respect and win-win cooperation.
Seventh, insist on fostering global partnerships by pursuing a broad-based diplomatic agenda.
Eighth, insist on steering reform of the global governance system to uphold fairness and justice.
Ninth, insist on upholding China’s sovereignty, security and development interests which represent the country’s core interests.
Tenth, insist on forging and developing China’s distinctive diplomacy by drawing on its fine tradition and adapting to the changing times.
The Thought is based on the objectives and stage of China’s development, as well as China’s basic judgment on situations home and abroad.
The stage of China’s development: on the one hand, China has already been the second largest economy, the largest industrial country, the largest goods trader and the country with the largest foreign currency reserves in the world. The life of Chinese people has stepped from shortage to abundance, from poverty to moderate prosperity. As socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, the principal contradiction of the Chinese society has evolved to the contradiction between the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life and unbalanced as well as inadequate development.
On the other hand, China remains in the primary stage of socialism, and is still the world’s largest developing country. There is still a large gap between China and western countries. China’s per capita GDP is just one sixth of that in the US and ranks only 71st in the world. Our people living under the poverty line are equal to the total population of Afghanistan. China has yet to achieve the national reunification. Its innovation capacity is not strong enough. China still faces many problems in the fields of employment, education, medical treatment, housing, pension, environment protection and so on. China has stepped on its tough stage to forestall and defuse major risks, carry out targeted poverty alleviation, prevent economic and financial risks and control pollution.
The goal of China’s development is: to build a moderately prosperous society in all aspects till 2020; to realize primary socialist modernization by 2035; to construct a comprehensively great modern socialist country by 2049, when we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. It is estimated by some scholars that by that time, the per capita GDP of China will be more than 30,000 US dollars, which is the level of moderately developed countries.
In this process, the Chinese military will primarily realize mechanization by 2020, primarily realize modernization by 2035, and will be world-class armed forces around 2049.
China has 3 basic judgments on the situations home and abroad:
First, China is increasingly moving closer to the world’s center stage. China’s much more closely related with the outside world, and the interaction is deepening. In the past 10 years, China has contributed one third of the world’s economic development, and the foreign trade also contributed more than one third to China’s economic growth.
Second, the world is undergoing major transformation and adjustment, but peace and development remain the call of our day. China is in the best period of its development in modern times, but risks, challenges and uncertainties have increased significantly. “The black swan is flying all over the sky, and the black rhinos are running everywhere”. The Cold war mentality and power politics are still wandering around. The unilateralism, protectionism and populism are raging around. The trend of opposing free trade and economic globalization is surging. And non-traditional security threats, such as terrorism, refugee crisis, major disasters and infectious diseases, are getting worse. China’s development is in its critical period of climbing and swaying. Human beings are once again at the crossroads on the history.
Third, the world’s multi-polarization, economic globalization, social information, cultural diversification developed extensively. A new round industrialization and technology revolution is on the way.
Emerging Market countries and a vast number of developing countries are rising up rapidly, which promoted the international power structure to be a much more balanced one. This trend will have twists and turns, but will not reverse fundamentally.
Diplomacy is a continuation of internal affairs. It must reflect the change of national power and the international environment.
Based on the above-mentioned judgments, the Chinese diplomacy in the new era must adapt to the changes that China has stood up, grown rich, and is becoming strong, and should continuously enhance its citizen’s sense of fulfillment, happiness and security, and keep in mind both internal and international imperatives. The Chinese diplomacy should serve the purpose of creating favorable conditions for comprehensively deepening reform and opening-up, building a moderately prosperous society, creating a more favorable international environment including fostering a global partnership network as well as a generally stable and balanced framework of major-country relations, promoting a more stable and friendly neighborhood environment, and enhancing solidarity and cooperation with other developing countries, as China was, is and will always be a member of the developing countries.
Xi Jinping’s Thought on Diplomacy is a development based on inheritance. It has the following distinctive features:
First, it has a clear goal. The overall goal of Chinese diplomacy is to forging new-type international relations and building a community with a shared future for mankind. This is the flag and image of the Chinese diplomacy, which combined the features of idealism and realism, answered the question of where the humankind should be heading, and provide a Chinese plan for tackling global challenges. The nature of the plan is to build an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity. Building a community with a shared future for mankind has been incorporated into relevant UN resolutions.