SA, China: win-win partnership the goal
Opening Remarks at the Seminar on Thought and Xi Jinping: the Governance of China II Book Review by the People’s Republic of China Ambassador to South Africa Lin Songtian.
AS YOU know, in October this year, the Communist Party of China (CPC) successfully held its 19th National Congress in Beijing. The congress elected a new generation of the central leadership with General Secretary Xi Jinping at its core. This congress set out a host of new ideas, new thinking, a new blueprint and a new strategy for China’s development.
Essentially, the congress unveiled overall plans for China’s development, its domestic and foreign policies, as well as party building for the period from now till the middle of this century.
As one of the most important outcomes, the congress has comprehensively reviewed the new thinking, new ideas, new strategy and new measures initiated bygeneral secretary Xi Jinping in a wide range of areas. These concern governance of the government, party, military, and diplomacy that have been proven as effective and immensely popular over the past five years, and systematically and succinctly summarised and encapsulated them as Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. It has been written into the Party Constitution of the CPC as the guiding philosophy and the basic policy to unite and lead the CPC and the Chinese people to achieve a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and to realise the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.
Xi Jinping Thought is a major theoretical innovation and the latest achievement in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context. It is Marxism in the Chinese context of the 21st century. And it is the action guide for China’s foreign policy to promote a better world and a community with a shared future for mankind.
The book Xi Jinping: the Governance of China II offers a record of how the CPC Central Committee, with General Secretary Xi Jinping its core, led nationwide efforts in developing socialism with Chinese characteristics, highlighting the evolution and achievements of Xi Jinping Thought. The volume also displays China’s wisdom and solutions for building a community with a shared future for mankind and for boosting peace and development. The two books and the Report delivered by General Secretary Xi Jinping at the 19th CPC National Congress together provide the most systematic and authoritative reading for both Chinese and foreign readers to understand and get the gist of Xi Jinping Thought, to find out what a new era China will enter, and how to realise the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation, and to comprehensively understand China’s past, present and future.
Therefore, it is highly relevant and significant to hold the seminar here today. This seminar gives us a great opportunity to exchange ideas, increase mutual understanding, strengthen unity and co-operation, and work together to build a better China, better South Africa, better Africa, and better ChinaSouth Africa and China-Africa relations.
Xi Jinping Thought is extremely rich and profound. It constitutes a complete theoretical system that covers a wide range of subjects, including reform, development and stability, domestic and foreign policies, national defence, and all aspects of governance of the party, the state, and the military.
Xi Jinping Thought addresses, from both the theoretical and practical perspective, the fundamental issues of what kind of socialism with Chinese characteristics China should uphold and develop in the new era. Also, how that is going to be achieved, including its overarching goal, master plan, overall strategy, and the development direction, approach, drive, strategic steps, external conditions, and political guarantees, which are summarised as the 8 “makes clear” and the 14 basic principles.
Among these, there are three defining features of Xi Jinping Thought:
First, it emphasises the importance of upholding and strengthening overall Party leadership, and ensuring that the Party exercises effective self-supervision and practises strict governance in every respect. General Secretary Xi stressed that, the key to the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the Party, and a great cause calls for strong leadership of the Party.
The Party shall exercise overall leadership and co-ordinate the efforts of all involved. Xi Jinping Thought asks Party members to consolidate and further build the great ideal of Communism and be united by a shared philosophy of socialism with Chinese characteristics, uphold the authority of the Central Committee and its centralised, unified leadership, and closely follow the political position, orientation, principles and path of the Central Committee both in thinking and action.
It stresses that enforcing strict Party discipline is a never-ending struggle and constant efforts are needed to strengthen the governance and leadership ability of the Party, and make the Party stronger, so that it always remains at the core to unite and lead the whole of the Chinese people.
Second, it commits to a people-centred approach. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that, the original aspiration and the mission of Chinese Communists is to seek happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation.
As a party of the people, for the people and by the people, the CPC is always committed to a people-centred approach.
The Party must put the interests of the people first, serve people whole-heartedly as its fundamental purpose, regards people’s aspiration to live a better life as its own goal, and put into practice the Party’s mass line in all aspects of governance, work hard to meet the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life, promote social fairness and justice, and realise well-rounded human development and social progress.
Currently, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinpingat the core is leading the Chinese people to secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020, to win the battle against poverty, and to leave no one behind among the entire 1.4-billion Chinese population on the path towards common prosperity.
Such a political commitment embodies the people-centred approach of Xi Jinping Thought and the fundamental feature of socialism which means all development achievements must be shared by all instead of a few.
This is the fundamental difference between socialism and capitalism which only cares about a small group of vested interests and where the rich become richer, and the poor get poorer.
Third, it emphasises to closely combine building a beautiful China and building a beautiful world, and the commitment to building a community with a shared future for mankind featuring an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity.
General Secretary Xi Jinping said, to make new and greater contributions to mankind is the CPC’s abiding mission. The dream of the Chinese people is closely connected with the dreams of the peoples of other countries. We must closely combine building a beautiful China and a beautiful world so as to realise winwin co-operation for common development.
China will continue to uphold the principle of peace, development, co-operation, and mutual benefit and advance its fundamental foreign policy goal of preserving world peace and promoting common development.
China pursues a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice, and win-win co-operation.
China will always promote world peace, contribute to world development, and uphold the international order. We will continue to promote Belt and Road international co-operation based on the principle of planning together, building together, and sharing together.
More efforts will be made to promote policy co-ordination, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and people-to-people friendship so as to build a new platform for international co-operation, create a new driving force for common development, and promote building a community with a shared future and a better future for humanity. These are not only the core ideas of the Major-Country Diplomacy with Chinese characteristics, but also our highest objective and pursuit.
Over the past five years, General Secretary Xi Jinping has indeed put forward a holistic important proposals and initiatives, such as building new type of international relations, the Belt and Road, and a community with a shared future for mankind.
These initiatives have explored a new development path of planning, building and sharing together to achieve win-win co-operation for common development, charted the course for a better future of mankind, and contributed Chinese wisdom and solutions to the world, which crystallises the philosophy and a strong sense of responsibility on the part of General Secretary Xi Jinping and the CPC.
China and Africa have always been a community of a shared future through thick and thin and a community of shared interest, mutual benefit, and win-win results.
We always believe that as the largest developing country and the continent with the largest number of developing countries, China and Africa are the new growth poles to drive the world economy and offer new hope and power for the sustainable development of the world.
To help Africa realise durable peace and sustainable development is conducive to increasing the overall strength of all developing countries, realising a more fair and just international order, and promoting world peace and prosperity.
It serves the interests of the whole world, especially of the developing countries.
President Xi Jinping has time and again instructed us to follow the principles of sincerity, practical results, affinity and good faith, and uphold the values of friendship, justice and shared interests in conducting China’s relations with Africa.
The essence of his idea is to closely combine China’s development with the self-sustainable development of African countries so as to achieve win-win co-operation for common development.
In December 2015, during the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (Focac) Johannesburg Summit, President Xi and other African leaders jointly opened up a new era of China-Africa win-win co-operation for common development.
At the Summit, President Xi announced the China-Africa Ten Major Co-operation Plans and $60 billion dollars of funding to support Africa in facilitating its industrialisation and agricultural modernisation process.
Today, we are happy to see many major infrastructure projects across the African continent financed and built by China and many more are under way or to be implemented.
China has taken actions. We call upon developed countries to follow China to care more and invest more in Africa’s peace and development, and make joint efforts to build a better future for Africa.
Currently, China-South Africa comprehensive strategic partnership maintains robust development momentum and is in its best historical period.
As two major emerging powers, China and South Africa are co-chairs of FOCAC and are both important members of the Brics, G20, UN and other multilateral institutions. United, we are playing increasingly important roles in promoting world peace and development and promoting the establishment of a more fair and reasonable international order so as to uphold the shared interests of China, South Africa and other developing countries.
For China-South Africa and China-Africa relations, we are blessed with three unique advantages of political mutual trust, economic complementarity, and friendship between our two peoples.
These advantages, coupled with our need for each other and our respective complementary strengths, give us rare historical opportunities for development co-operation. Next year will be a big year for all of us. China will embark upon the full implementation of the blueprint mapped out at the 19th CPC National Congress, bringing the world new opportunities and new momentum.
FOCAC may convene a summit in China. China and South Africa are going to celebrate the 20th anniversary of diplomatic relations. And South Africa will host the Brics Summit.
China will join efforts with South Africa and Africa to avail these opportunities to make new plans for development co-operation, synergise development strategies, roll out a new blueprint, and fully deepen China-South Africa and China-Africa unity and co-operation.
We will translate our political mutual trust and friendship into concrete actions, and translate our comparative and complementary strengths into more tangible results to benefit our peoples so as to present the peoples of China, South Africa, and Africa with an even brighter future.