On December 24, Chinese Ambassador to Sudan Ma Xinmin publishes an signature article titled China’s Development Blueprint Brings New Opportunities to the World for the China Focus Column on Sudanese Voice. The full text is as follows:
Not long ago, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee was successfully concluded. The Recommendations of the CPC Central Committee for Formulating the 14th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Goals for 2035 (the “Recommendations”) adopted at the plenum set out a great vision for China’s economic and social development in the coming five years and beyond. It marks the beginning of a new journey toward fully building a modern socialist country for 1.4 billion Chinese people. The Recommendations give us a glimpse of the direction and prospects of China’s future development.
Achieving shared prosperity for everyone is the ultimate goal of China’s socialist modernization. Development is for the people, and development outcomes ought to be shared by the people. All our undertakings are directed toward continually improving life quality and living standards of the people. In 2012, China launched a full-scale battle against poverty. Through arduous efforts in the past eight years, China manages to lift approximately 100 million rural population out of poverty and eradicate extreme poverty and regional poverty. This is a great contribution to the cause of global poverty reduction. However, China does face the daunting challenge of inadequate and unbalanced development, as there are huge disparities in development between rural and urban areas and between regions and in income distribution. To tackle these issues, the Suggestions adhere to the people-centric development philosophy and call for solid progress in achieving common prosperity. The blueprint takes the improvement of people’s well-being to a new level as one of the main objectives set for the 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) period and envisions a more notable and substantial progress in achieving common prosperity for all as one of the long-range goals for 2035. These efforts are expected to promote well-rounded human development and comprehensive social progress and enable people to feel increasingly satisfied, happy and secure. Ensuring all people have good lives is the fundamental purpose of China’s endeavors to seek development and prosperity. No one can deprive the Chinese people of their right to pursue a better life. Nor can anyone stop China from moving forward.
Fostering a new development paradigm more rapidly is a strategic arrangement for China’s socialist modernization. In the 14th FYP period, China will embark on a new development journey toward fully building a modern socialist country and realizing its second centenary goal. It will fully implement the new philosophy emphasizing innovative, coordinated, green and open development for all and work faster to foster a new development paradigm with domestic circulation as the mainstay and domestic and international circulations reinforcing each other. To foster a new development architecture, it is essential for China to expand domestic demand as a strategic priority and ensure smooth flow of economic activity by unclogging production, distribution, circulation and consumption bottlenecks. It is essential for China to fully tap into the strength of its enormous market of 1.4 billion people including 400 million middle income population and build faster a thorough architecture of domestic demand. It is essential for China to better interconnect domestic and international markets, better utilize resources available in domestic and international markets and create new advantages for its participation in international economic cooperation, in order to achieve dual circulations. Fostering a new development paradigm is a proactive step taken by China to respond to changes emerging in domestic and international situations, and also a long-term strategy for boosting economic development in the new times. It is not a closed-door circulation of domestic economy, but open and mutually reinforcing domestic and international circulations.
Adhering to innovation, reform and opening-up is an important approach toward China’s socialist modernization. As innovation is the soul of a nation’s progress, China will make all-out efforts to create strong engines of innovation. The Suggestions highlight the need to maintain the central role of innovation in China’s overall drive towards modernization and pursue scientific and technological self-reliance as a strategic safeguard for national development, and call for building China into a science and technology giant more rapidly through deeply implementing the strategy for invigorating China through science and education, the strategy on developing a quality workforce and the innovation-driven development strategy and improving the country’s innovation framework. Also, China will pursue with resolve continued reform across the board and foster a high-standard socialist market economy. In this regard, the Suggestions underscore the need to uphold and refine the basic systems of socialist economy, allow the market to play its decisive role in resource allocation and better leverage the role of government. Furthermore, as China’s economic and social development directly benefits from opening up, China will remain steadfast in opening itself wider to the world. For that to happen, the Suggestions propose opening up across more sectors and in a more thorough fashion, building a new system of open economy of higher standards, promoting high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, and getting more actively involved in reforming the system of global economic governance. During the 14th FYP period, China is on track to further shorten the negative list, formulate more detailed implementing rules for the Foreign Investment Law, step up protection of foreign investment, and at the same time, eliminate a slew of systemic and institutional barriers to opening up.
Adopting a peace development approach is a strategic choice for China’s socialist modernization. The Chinese nation and people cherish peace. Having suffered from the miseries of colonization, invasion and war, China knows full well the brutalities of war and the value of peace. During the new journey toward fully building a modern socialist country, China will uphold the values of peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom shared by all of us, follow a global governance philosophy that emphasizes extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, and stick to the path of peaceful development, openness-based development, cooperative development and shared development. China always follows a defense policy that is defensive in nature, with its armed forces serving as a staunch force for world peace. China will never seek hegemony, expansion or sphere of influence, and firmly opposes hegemonism and power politics. In international affairs, China resolutely upholds the international order underpinned by the international law, the international system with the United Nations as the core, and the multilateral trading regime with the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the cornerstone. China will continue to actively get engaged in reforming the global governance system to make it more equitable, reasonable, inclusive and beneficial for all, and remain committed to the building of a community with a shared future for all.
As an old Chinese saying goes, a man of virtue will not be isolated. China cannot be separated from the world in achieving development, and the world also needs China for prosperity. China has all along been a stability anchor of the global economy, an engine of economic growth and a tremendous market full of opportunities. Also, China will remain a staunch defender of world peace, an important contributor to global development and an active promotor of the community with a shared future for all. We are convinced that China’s development blueprint will undoubtedly provide fresh impetus and new opportunities for promoting world peace and stability, driving global economic recovery and facilitating global governance. China stands ready to work hard with the rest of the world to write a new chapter of shared development and prosperity.