Chinese envoy for strategy to tackle threat to global security

LAHORE: Chinese Acting Consul General in Lahore Peng Zhengwu has said that keeping in view the daunting challenges to world especially cold war, COVID-19, rising unilateralism, conventional and non-conventional security issues and so on which together pose a severe threat to global and regional security, there is an urgent need for human society to seek out a new philosophy and make the international system and order fairer and more reasonable.

According to a press release issued on Sunday, he said that over the past 72 years weathering all odds and getting over multiple crises, China had witnessed profound and transformative change and it was the Communist Party of China (CPC) that made this change possible.

He expressed these views at a seminar titled “The 72nd Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China and President Xi’s Governance” organised by Institute of International Relations and Media Research (IIRMR) in a local hotel.

Chinese diplomats, scholars, academicians, analysts and others attended the seminar held in connection with the celebrations of the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China known as China National Day set to be marked on October 1.

Mr Peng said that CPC had led the Chinese people to win a complete victory in eradicating absolute poverty. It has raised China’s per capita GDP from less than US$200 at the start of the reforms and opening up to today over US$10,000. “China has met the poverty eradication target set in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule, and according to the World Bank's international poverty line, the number of Chinese people lifted out of poverty over the past 40 years accounts for more than 70 percent of the global total,” he added.

Peng heralded that China would continue to propel the CPEC forward and termed the 10th JCC precursor of good fortune. He said, “President Xi put forward a concept — building a global community of shared future since 2012.”

IIRMR Chairman Muhammad Mehdi dubbed CPEC as a golden opportunity that should never be missed. Pakistan can also do the wonders provided Chinese strategy is practised,” he said. IIRMR President Yasir Habib Khan said Pakistani leadership must have to meet public demands, otherwise, misfortunes might spiral out of control.

Additional Foreign Secretary (r) Nazir Hussain said that Pakistan needed to harvest the benefits arising from the CPEC phase-ii, especially the special economic zones and to exercise fiscal discipline.

PU Faculty of Law Dean Professor Dr Aman Ullah praised China for investing in its human resource seriously with sustainable economic policies. PU Department of Economic former head Dr Qais Alam rejected the qualms that China wanted hegemony or a cold war with the West. He asserted “We should keep a balance between China and the West, working with both powers for common human destiny.”

PU Pakistan Study Centre Associate Professor Dr Amjad Abbas Khan Magzi underscored the need to work on agro-based economy to tackle poverty as more than 20 percent of Pakistan’s GDP was contributed by agriculture. Forman Christian College University Department of Economics Assistant Professor Dr Salah Ud Din Ayubi said the prospects of the Pak-China bilateral relationship depended on the growing connectivity between the leadership, businesses and people in the two countries in the years to come.