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Growing role of 'China model'

By Yu Sui (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-01 07:30

The "China model" that was established after the founding of the People's Republic of China and has ever since materialized has exerted growing influence on the world's political and economic landscape.

On the basis of its distinctive national conditions, cultural traditions and its sharp perception of world developmental tendency, China has taken the peaceful development road and has successfully forged itself into a regional power with global influence. Its peaceful development over the past six decades has facilitated change of the world's strategic structure. At the same time, its international status has also been elevated in the process.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the world was a bi-polar one mainly dominated by the United States and the erstwhile Soviet Union. With their separate military and economic camps, the two superpowers sought an omnipresent confrontation on the international stage and did whatever they willed in defiance of some binding multilateral institutions. The international situation underwent enormous changes during the 1980s when there emerged a strong momentum among European countries for regional integration, Japan ascended to the world's second largest economy and China embarked on the historical reform and opening-up policy. The emergence of different powers or power centers across the world promoted the shift towards multi-polarization.

China's international status has been on a vertical rise due to its unwavering adoption of a peaceful development policy. However, the country's status as the world's third largest economy has not changed the basic fact that its per capita gross domestic product (GDP) still ranks very low compared with other countries.

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China should be well aware that it is not the only country capable of promoting the change of the world's strategic structure. As the world's sole superpower, the US has really seen its influence on the ebb, but its power is unlikely to be transcended by any other individual country in a short period.

China's influence on the world's political and economic order has been steadily increasing. Over the past decades, the international political and economic order has been still dominated by a handful of developed countries, with the majority of developing nations being bypassed despite their rising calls for the establishment of a new world order. In the 1980s, the Chinese leadership, well aware of the crux of the complicated international situation, repeatedly called for a new international political and economic order to be set up on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and made unremitting efforts toward this. Through its peaceful foreign policy and self-development, China has played an increasingly bigger role in the formulation of the long-anticipated new international order.

China's provision of sufficient food and clothing to its large population, one-fifth of the world's total, is itself a big contribution to world peace and security. Over the past decades, China has never stopped safeguarding the authority of the United Nations and participating in UN-led multilateral activities. It has also actively carried out cooperation with other countries on economic, anti-terror, arms control, peacekeeping, human rights, judicial and environmental issues to better deal with the world's major challenges and hot spots. China's extensive cooperation with the rest of the world on trade, finance, investment and energy has also contributed a lot to international efforts towards the establishment of an open and equitable trade regime and the improvement of the extant international financial system. All these will help trade disputes be resolved through dialog and negotiation.

China's rapid development has also provided other countries with extensive market opportunities and thus helped promote a joint development with them. On the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, China pursues a peaceful foreign policy of independence and seeks to build a lasting peaceful and a prosperous world community through cooperation on a mutually beneficial and win-win footing.

Socialism with Chinese characteristics has gradually won the country extensive appreciation from the rest of the world.

The author is a researcher with the Research Center of Contemporary World