Cultivate the seeds for community of shared future

While addressing the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly on Sept 28, 2015, President Xi Jinping, in his statement titled "Working together to forge a new partnership of win-win cooperation and create a community of shared future for mankind", emphasized that, "In today's world, all countries are interdependent and share a common future."

Based on this judgment, he urged all countries to build a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation, and create a community with a shared future for mankind based on five principles: building partnerships in which countries treat each other as equals, engage in mutual consultation and show mutual understanding; creating a security architecture featuring fairness, justice, joint contribution and shared benefits; promoting open, innovative and inclusive development that benefits all; increasing inter-civilization exchanges to promote harmony, inclusiveness and respect for differences; and building an ecosystem that puts Mother Nature and green development first.

Given the nature of the current international community and the inertia of international politics, characterized by the law of the jungle and zero-sum games, there is reason enough to doubt the enforceability of Xi's beautiful ideas. It seems humankind is in a dilemma, the dilemma of choosing between a community with a shared future or a community with no future. But there is only one correct choice.