Independence and development

Editor's note: Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on China's diplomatic achievements over the past 60 years since the founding of the People's Republic.

Since the outbreak of the international financial crisis, China, while endeavoring to maintain steady and relatively fast growth of its own economy, has been actively involved in the international cooperation to tackle the crisis. We have put forward many important proposals, which were highly acclaimed by the international community. Through these efforts, we have not only gained an enabling external environment for meeting our central task of ensuring growth, people's well-being and social stability at home, but also boosted the confidence of the international community to overcome the crisis and contributed significantly to promoting world economic recovery and international financial stability.

Over the past 60 years, China's diplomacy has played an important part in upholding the country's sovereignty, security and development interests and in promoting world peace, development and cooperation. We have worked closely with other countries to address various international disputes with a responsible manner. We have vigorously conducted economic, cultural and public diplomacy and achieved fruitful results. The number of countries having diplomatic relations with us has increased from 18 in the early days of the People's Republic to 171 today.