Ushering in a shared future

At the recent Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs held in China, President Xi Jinping delivered an important address in which he presented a systematic review of the historic achievements and valuable experience of major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics in the new era.

President Jinping gave a profound exposition on the international environment and historical mission of China’s external work on the new journey and made comprehensive plans for China’s external work for the present and coming periods. This provides the fundamental guideline for advancing major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.

We are currently thoroughly studying, understanding, and implementing the spirit of President Xi Jinping’s important address and the spirit of the Conference. Guided by the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era and the Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy, we will forge ahead and try our best to make new achievements, create a more favourable international environment, and provide more solid strategic support for building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects and advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through the Chinese path to modernization.

We stand ready to strengthen mutual learning, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, and strengthen multilateral coordination with Pakistan, to build an even closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era, and make new and greater contributions to building a community with a shared future for humanity.

In terms of strengthening mutual learning, we stand ready to share with the Pakistani side the major theoretical innovations of the Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy. We see the building of a community with a shared future for humanity as the noble goal pursued by China in conducting major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics for the new era. The goal is to build an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world of lasting peace, universal security, and shared prosperity.

The pathway is promoting global governance that features extensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefits. The guiding principle is to apply the common values of humanity. The basic underpinning lies in building a new type of international relations. The strategic guidance comes from the implementation of the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative, and the platform for action is the high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.

Building a community with a shared future for humanity has developed from a Chinese initiative to an international consensus, from a promising vision to substantive actions, and from a conceptual proposition to a scientific system. China has built different forms of communities with a shared future with dozens of countries and regions and has signed Belt and Road cooperation documents with more than three-quarters of countries in the world and over 30 international organizations. The concept of building a community with a shared future for humanity has been written into UN documents many times.

In terms of deepening mutually beneficial cooperation, we stand ready to work with Pakistan to enrich the vivid practice of building a community with a shared future. CPEC as a pioneering project of the Belt and Road Initiative has made important contributions to Pakistan’s economic development and people’s livelihood enhancement over the past 10 years. At the critical moment when CPEC construction was to be improved and upgraded, President Xi Jinping met with Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar, who was in China to attend the Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. The two leaders reached an important consensus on deepening China-Pakistan all-weather strategic cooperation and promoting CPEC construction.

Under the strong guidance and promotion of high-level consensus, building CPEC into a growth, livelihood-enhancing, innovative, green, and open corridor has been fully launched. The railway upgrading and highway realignment projects are accelerating, concrete plans for Pakistan’s agricultural cooperation with Xinjiang have been formed, and the first batch of Pakistani dried chili has been smoothly shipped to China. Moreover, the Khunjerab Pass’s functioning all year round is being intensively prepared, and the Rashakai SEZ Phase-I has been completed. The CPEC construction has entered a new stage of high-quality development, which injects new impetus into the building of an even closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future.

In terms of strengthening multilateral coordination, we stand ready to join hands with the Pakistani side to safeguard international fairness and justice and promote common development and prosperity for all countries. Currently, great transformation is accelerating across the world. Changes in the world, of historical significance, are unfolding like never before, and the world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation.

Yet the overall direction of human development and progress will not change, the overall dynamics of world history moving forward amid twists and turns will not change, and the overall trend toward a shared future for the international community will not change. It is doomed to failure if one country goes against the trend of history, maintains the cold-war mentality and obsession with hegemony, pursues unilateralism, stokes bloc confrontation, and contains and suppresses specific countries. And there is no future for those who go against the common aspirations of the international community, pursue domestic priority and a winner-take-all attitude, promote protectionism, build ‘small yards with high fences’, and resort to sanctions and pressure.

Given the series of major issues and challenges facing the world today, China calls for an equal and orderly multipolar world and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization. In an equal and orderly multipolar world, all countries, regardless of size, are treated as equals, hegemonism and power politics are rejected, and democracy is truly promoted in international relations so that every country or country group can find its place in the multipolar system.

To ensure the overall stability and effectiveness of the multipolarization process, which becomes a historical process in which countries unite rather than divide, we need to engage in dialogue rather than confrontation and cooperate rather than conflict. A universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization complies with the common aspirations of all countries in the world, especially the developing countries, in which we work together to make the ‘pie’ of economic globalization bigger and fairly shared, resolutely oppose unilateralism and protectionism, firmly promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and achieve mutual benefit and common prosperity.

China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic cooperative partners and the backbone of the international community in safeguarding fairness and justice and promoting development and prosperity. We stand ready to continuously work with friends from all walks of life in Pakistan, by implementing the important consensus reached by President Xi Jinping and Pakistani leaders as the guiding principle, building a closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era as the main line.

We also aim to promote the high-quality development of CPEC as the major platform, to continuously consolidate, deepen and expand the China-Pakistan all-weather strategic cooperation, to safeguard our common interests in the changes unseen in a century, to better benefit the two peoples, and to jointly usher in a bright future of peace, security, prosperity and progress for our world.

The writer is China’s ambassador to Pakistan.