China's rise opportunity, rather than threat

DUBLIN - China's rise is an opportunity, rather than a threat to the rest of the world, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Tuesday.

Addressing Ireland's leading think tank the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), Chinese Ambassador to Ireland Luo Linquan said China is the most populous developing country, and to run itself well is the most important fulfilment of its international responsibility.

"China has to feed close to 20 percent of the world's population with 7.9 percent of the world's farmland and 6.5 percent of the world's fresh water. During the last decade alone, over 67 million people from rural areas have shaken off poverty, which is equivalent to the size of the French population," he said.

Luo said China has made important contribution to the stable development of the world economy.

"Following the international financial crisis in 2008, China has taken an active part in the G20's efforts to build a global economic governance mechanism, promoted the reform of the international financial system. It has sent large overseas purchasing missions and helped countries in difficulties," he said.

The Chinese ambassador said China plays an important role in safeguarding world peace and meeting global challenge.

"China has played a constructive role in addressing international and regional hotspot problems. For instance, it calls for resolving the Korean nuclear issue, the Iranian nuclear issue and other hotspot issues through peaceful talks, and has helped to establish the Six-Party Talks mechanism on the Korean nuclear issue," he said.

"China is the first developing country to formulate and implement the National Climate Change Program. It is also one of the countries which had made the greatest efforts in energy saving and emission reduction and which have made the fastest progress in developing new and renewal energy sources in recent years," he said.

Luo said China's peaceful development has broken away from the traditional pattern where a rising power was bound to seek hegemony.

"China's path of peaceful development is a choice of inheriting the Chinese historical and cultural tradition of 'unity without uniformity' and 'you should not do unto others what you would not have them to do unto you.'" he said.

"China's path of peaceful development is a choice determined by China's basic national conditions and a choice that represents the global trend. The practice for several decades has proved that it's a right choice and we have no reason to change it," he said.

"Meanwhile, I would simply emphasize that China will not create troubles but neither will it fear troubles. We are firm in our resolve to uphold China's sovereignty, security and development interests and will never yield to any outside pressure," he said.

On China-Europe relations, he said China and Europe are major economies in the world as well as important forces in the international setup.

"China remained confident about the future of European integration, and has provided firm support to Europe since the outbreak of the debt crisis. We contributed 43 billion U.S. dollars to the IMF, and provided assistance to Europe within our capabilities through purchasing European treasury bonds and increasing imports from Europe," Luo said.