Building a Community with a Shared Future for Humanity
The world is undergoing major developments, transformation, and adjustment, but peace and development remain the call of our day. No country can address alone the many challenges facing humanity; no country can afford to retreat into self-isolation. All countries should stick together through thick and thin, and join hands to promote world peace and development.
In his speech at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in March 2013, Xi Jinping for the first time put forward the idea of “a community with a shared future.” He elaborated on this idea on more than one occasions afterward, thus forming a complete thought with rich connotation.
The essence of this vision is, as stated in the report to the 19th CPC National Congress, to “build an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity.”
In other words, efforts are needed in politics, security, economy, culture and ecology. All countries should respect each other, discuss issues as equals, and take a new approach to developing state-to-state relations with communication, not confrontation, and with partnership, not alliance; commit to settling disputes through dialogue and resolving differences through discussion, coordinate responses to traditional and non-traditional threats, and oppose terrorism in all its forms; stick together through thick and thin, promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and make economic globalization more open, inclusive, and balanced so that its benefits are shared by all; respect the diversity of civilizations, replace estrangement with exchange, clashes with mutual learning, and superiority with coexistence in handling relations among civilizations; be good friends to the environment, cooperate to tackle climate change, and protect our planet for the sake of human survival.
Building a community with a shared future is a major innovation of China. It is producing far-reaching global influence, with high praise and active response from the international community, and has been written into UN documents more than once.