Its peaceful rise not just dependent on China

We live in extremely perilous times.

I take the opportunity of prefacing my remarks by saying how terribly is missed, especially in current situation, the late Wu Jianmin, who tragically died in an automobile accident on June 18. I first met him when he was China's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, then we met on a number of occasions in Paris when he was ambassador to France and later in Beijing when he was president of China Foreign Affairs University. He was truly an exceptional human being in combining great wit, great wisdom and great warmth. He was an ardent proponent of China's peaceful rise.

The person who actually coined the term, China's peaceful rise to great power status, is Zheng Bijian, a major Chinese and global thought leader. Noting that all previous nations that rose to great global power status (Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United States) did so through war and plunder, China's route should be different and peaceful. A major driver, argued Zheng, is that the country still needed to do so much to develop itself and lift the Chinese people to reasonable standards of living following the devastating experiences China had suffered in the 19th and 20th centuries.