Experts commend China’s reform in past five years, predict bigger global role
BEIJING - In the past five years, China has achieved great results in pushing forward reforms on the domestic front and played a more active role on the global stage, experts in many countries said when asked to comment on a key speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of the 19th national congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, gave the speech at a workshop for provincial and ministerial officials earlier this week. Severino Cabral, head of the Brazilian Institute of China and Asia Pacific Studies, said that since the last CPC national congress, the Chinese government has carried out many concrete measures to promote healthier socioeconomic development, adding that what China has done in ensuring social progress while markedly improving people’s living standard has won admiration across the globe.
China’s growth model and the country’s governance style have offered an inspiration for other countries, and China’s proposal for common development has been increasingly responded to in the face of unstable global economy and security, Cabral said. Guo Shengxiang, dean of the Academy of APEC Creative Finance, an Australian think tank, said the CPC has been striving to build a “new normal” of slower but more sustainable economic growth in the past five years, laying a solid foundation for the country to bypass the “middle-income trap.”
China’s anti-corruption endeavors during the five-year period also drew positive comments.
Macharia Munene, professor of international relations at the U.S. International University in Nairobi, said that China’s fight against corruption has proven effective, and that has won applause from both home and abroad. Munene also expressed confidence that under the leadership of the CPC, China will give a right answer as how to tackle the global problem of corruption.
Koh Chin Yee, CEO of the Longus Research Institute in Singapore, said China’s anti-corruption drive and its moves to strengthen party discipline have reduced the social cost of corruption and burnished the CPC’s leadership role in China.
By putting forward the Belt and Road Initiative and showing growing willingness to play a major role in promoting globalization, China has given a shot in the arm for the flagging global economy, said Koh.
Jiagu Richter, a foreign policy expert with the University of Vienna, noted that China has accomplished several “big deeds” in diplomacy over the past few years, including setting up the Asia Infrastructure Development Bank, and pushing forward the Belt and Road Initiative. An increasing number of people in Europe are starting to realize that many countries could benefit if China succeeds in its endeavors, he said, underlining China’s role as a global stabilizer.
Xi’s speech at the high-level meeting indicates that China will continue its “majorcountry foreign policy with Chinese characteristics” and keep up its practice of multilateralism by shouldering more global responsibilities and providing more public products, Richter said.
Abbas Zaki, a senior Fatah official in charge of managing relations between China and the Palestinians, told Xinhua that various concepts put forward by China, including common development and common prosperity, are in line with the aspirations of all mankind, and Chinaproposed solutions to some major global issues such as fighting terrorism have raised China’s global profile.
(Xinhuanet.com)