On April 20, 2024, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng attended the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024 and delivered a speech, elaborating on the global relevance of Chinese modernization and the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Ambassador Xie said that we are now living in a turbulent time. It seems that everywhere we look, we see powder kegs that can explode anytime. Energy, food and debt crises keep emerging. Non-traditional security challenges such as artificial intelligence, climate change and biosecurity are on the rise. The very survival of human civilization is at stake. The world is again at a crossroads. All countries are in the same boat. Amidst the raging torrents, we need to pull together, not pull apart. China’s choice is clear and firm: At home, we will focus on achieving Chinese modernization; internationally, we will forge a community with a shared future for mankind.  

A developing China will keep making contribution to building a world of lasting peace. Chinese modernization is for our 1.4 billion people. So far, less than 1 billion in the world have achieved modernization. Once China accomplishes its target, the global modernized population will be more than doubled. This is unprecedented, and will be an important contribution to world peace and development in itself.

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, especially since the launch of reform and opening-up in 1978, China has come a long way. Once a poor and weak nation that could not even make a single iron nail, it is now the world’s second-largest economy and biggest trader in goods. Meanwhile, though, China’s per capita GDP still ranks after the 60th. Our per capita arable land and water resources are respectively less than half and only one-fourth of the global average. The way toward all-round modernization remains long and arduous, and development will continue to be our top priority. 

Our goal is simple: to deliver a better life for each and every Chinese. Over the past decades, we have revitalized our country through reform and opening-up, and made notable progress within the existing international order. There is simply no reason why we should shut our doors and reinvent the wheel today. Instead, we will open up wider at a higher standard, advance high-quality development, and inject greater stability and positive energy into the world.

A China where everyone benefits from development will keep creating opportunities for building a world of common prosperity.

Chinese modernization is about common prosperity for all. We will both make the pie bigger and share it more fairly, so as to offer new solutions to the universal challenge of polarization, and ensure the gains of modernization will benefit all people in a more equitable way.

Confucius once said, “Worry not about scarcity, but about inequality”. For thousands of years, common prosperity has been a shared aspiration of the Chinese people. A lot has been done. We have achieved moderate prosperity, and lifted over 800 million people out of poverty. 

While China has a 400-million-strong middle-income group, its per capita GDP has only recently exceeded $12,000. Even so, China contributed one-third of global growth last year with a 5.2% growth rate. Just imagine how much more potential will be unlocked as China’s population in the middle-income bracket reaches 800 million, and as higher-end, diverse consumption further surges!

The world will be better only when all get better. Modernization should not make the rich richer and the poor poorer, in China and globally alike. No country should be left behind in the process of global modernization. This is why President Xi Jinping put forward the Global Development Initiative (GDI). To date, over 70 countries have joined the Group of Friends of the GDI, and more than 200 cooperation projects are up and running, providing a strong impetus for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a vivid example of seeking common prosperity for the world. Over 3,000 cooperation projects have been launched, and 420,000 jobs created. For participating countries, the BRI is a road to cooperation, opportunity and prosperity.

A China making constant progress will keep serving as a bridge for building an open and inclusive world.

Chinese modernization is about both material abundance and cultural-ethical enrichment, with the aim of promoting all-round social progress and well-rounded human development.

From day one of its founding, the Communist Party of China has been a champion of democracy. We have written “upholding and protecting human rights” into our Constitution, and incorporated “democracy” and “freedom” into both core socialist values and the common values of humanity. 

China’s democracy is whole-process people’s democracy. It is a democracy in both process and outcome; a combination of both procedural and substantive, and direct and indirect democracy. It is people’s democracy in nature, and at the same time represents the will of the state. The Kennedy School’s decade-long surveys in China showed that over 90% of the Chinese people are satisfied with the central government. All roads lead to Rome, and a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Democracy is not an ornament or a show. It should be about solving real problems for the people.

Likewise, each civilization is unique in its own way, and none is superior to others. This is why President Xi put forward the Global Civilization Initiative. It advocates respect for the diversity of civilizations, and calls for overcoming estrangement between civilizations with exchanges, preventing their clash with mutual learning, and rejecting a false sense of superiority with coexistence, so that all civilizations will flourish together.

A green China will keep injecting momentum into building a clean and beautiful world. 

Chinese modernization is about harmony between humanity and Nature. Ten years ago, when Beijing hosted the 22nd APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, President Xi said at the welcome dinner that in the future, people in Beijing would see a blue sky every day. Today, “AEPC blue” has become “Beijing blue” and “China blue”. China has seen the fastest improvement in air quality, is home to the largest afforested area in the world, and is the first country that has achieved land degradation neutrality. Giant pandas are no more endangered. Half of the world’s electric vehicles are running on roads in China. We also account for over half of the newly installed capacity of renewable energy globally.

We are living on the same planet. Frequent extreme weather events have again sounded the alarm, warning us that we need to treat Nature with reverence and follow its laws. China has not only committed itself to moving from carbon peak to carbon neutrality in the shortest time span in human history, but also actively advanced South-South cooperation on climate change. We have launched hundreds of clean energy and green development projects in Africa, so as to pursue green, low-carbon and sustainable development together.

A peaceful China will keep fulfilling its responsibilities for building a world of universal security. 

Chinese modernization is about peaceful development. We will also encourage more countries to follow the path of peaceful development together. What the Chinese people long for are peace in every corner of the world, amity with all countries, and harmony without uniformity. The ambition to seek hegemony, dominate the world, and challenge and displace others is not in our DNA. 

Shortly after the founding of New China, we put forward the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. Over the past 70-plus years, China has never initiated a war, or occupied an inch of foreign land. It is the only country that has put peaceful development in its Constitution, and the only country among the five nuclear-weapon states to pledge no-first-use. It is also the top contributor of peacekeeping personnel among the permanent members of the UN Security Council.

We believe no one is safe unless all are safe. This is why President Xi put forward the Global Security Initiative, envisioning a new path to security that features dialogue over confrontation, partnership over alliance, and win-win over zero-sum.

With China’s active efforts, a historic reconciliation was reached between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Amid the Ukraine crisis, our special envoy traveled back and forth to mediate among different parties, so as to pave the way for peace talks. On the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, we facilitated the adoption of the first resolution at the Security Council since the outbreak of the conflict, and calls for a more broad-based and effective international peace conference, so as to protect women and children from the scourge of war, and let peace prevail.