Xi’s Worldwide Diplomacy Benefits China and the World, Xinhua Writes

Several pieces in Xinhua‘s English-language online service today underline the key role that must be played in 2016 by President Xi’s call for building a community of common destiny. One article underlined Xi’s view that China must assume a new role in international diplomacy, telling a conference on foreign affairs that “China must have diplomacy with its own characteristics” which goes “beyond the local neighborhood.” “[xi] then defined the Chinese dream as one of peace, development, cooperation and win-win outcome. By this definition, he linked China’s future with the destiny of the world,” Xinhua writes.

The article notes Xi’s personal diplomacy, traveling on 19 visits abroad, and spending more than 133 days outside the country since his appointment as General Secretary in November 2012. He has also met with 165 state and government leaders in Beijing during that time. “All his effort is not only for the Chinese dream but also for the shared destiny and future of the world as a whole,” Xinhua writes.

The article goes on to underline China’s principle of “peaceful development” based on economic and political cooperation with all countries. The prime examples of this policy are seen, the article continues, in the proposal for the “One Belt, One Road”, the creation of the AIIB, and the call for reforming economic governance which was highlighted at the recent APEC meeting in Beijing.

In a related article, Xinhua points out President Xi’s significant role in reforming the Chinese economy towards a “new normal” with the collapse of the world export market, stressing the increase of domestic consumption as an engine of growth, an emphasis on innovation and creativity, and a shift to meeting global infrastructure needs with the excess industrial capacity in China created by the demise of the consumer export market.

In a lengthy speech to party officials last October, outlining the directions for policy during the next five-year plan, President Xi underlined the fact that, in spite of the major scientific and technological breakthroughs made by China in the last decades, the country still had not come up to the level needed for China to play its rightful role economically in a world in which China was now a key player in setting the rules. There Xi underlined the need for party and government officials and industrial entrepreneurs to push for excellence in order to make the leaps needed by China to reach its full development. And a good deal of that speech focused on the need for the party officials and members to always have foremost in their minds the tens of millions of people still living in impoverished conditions, and who must be brought out of poverty before the “China Dream” can become a reality.