China plays positive role in int'l community Tao WenzhaoChina Daily Updated: 2006-02-23 05:40
A big question is haunting top US decision-makers and their peers in some
other countries: Will China's rapid development pose a challenge to the
international system?
Their worry is groundless because the course of China's reform and opening up
in the past two and a half decades and a half is a process of integration into
the international system.
Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of the country's reform and opening up,
once observed that no country could achieve modernization in seclusion. It
follows that China must be open to the rest of the world, including
international organizations.
First and foremost, China, the only developing country among the five
permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, has been faithfully
playing its role in the UN, the largest and most widely represented
international organization.
In September 2005, President Hu Jintao, in his attendance of the ceremony
marking the 60th anniversary of the UN, reiterated China's support for
strengthening the UN Security Council's role in maintaining world peace and
reinforcing international security, called for building a harmonious
international community and announced China's five important measures in helping
speed up the growth of developing countries. All this won wide acclaim from the
international community.
Starting from 1988, China has been taking an active part in the United
Nations peace-keeping undertakings. China's first "blue-helmet" contingent was
organized in 1992, made up by 47 military observers and a 400-person engineering
brigade, and was sent to Cambodia to carry out the UN's peace-keeping mission.
In January 2002, China decided to elevate its involvement in UN peace-keeping
missions to a higher grade. Now, Chinese peacekeepers are seen actively involved
in peace-keeping tasks from Central America to the South Pacific region.
China is a nuclear power and also an important member of the world's
non-proliferation system. The country, from the moment it possessed a nuclear
arsenal, declared that it would never use nuclear weapons first under any
circumstances and has stuck to the principle ever since.
In addition, China is a signatory of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons and supports the treaty's indefinite extension. The country has
also signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and become a full member
of the Nuclear Suppliers Group in 2004.
China signed the chemical and bio weapons ban treaties and pledged its full
compliance with the principles and parameters of the Missile Technology Control
Regime as early as 1992. The country also demonstrated its willingness to be a
full member of the regime. Besides this, China has formulated whole sets of
rules and regulations with respect to the control of export of sensitive
materials, technologies and equipment involving nuclear-related items, biology,
chemicals and missiles. These rules and regulations are basically compatible
with international conventions and have been rigorously enforced.
China entered the World Trade Organization at the end of 2001 after 13 years
of gruelling negotiations and is now effectively implementing its WTO
commitments.
In the field of human rights, China has signed the Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights Treaty and the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.
With regard to environmental protection, China is the member of Kyoto
Protocol and a series of environmental-protection organizations. The Chinese
Government has made it clear that the growth mode for the Chinese economy will
be put on an energy-saving and environment-friendly basis.
In view of this, the conclusion can be drawn that China is an active player
in the international system.
Also, China is the beneficiary of the mechanisms of the current international
system.
Economic globalization has been picking up speed since the end of the Cold
War in the early 1990s. And the Chinese Government has committed the country to
this process.
This has ensured the rapid growth of the Chinese economy. China's foreign
trade, for example, doubled in 2004 since the country's WTO entry at the end of
2001. Meanwhile, China has been one of the biggest recipients of foreign direct
investment (FDI) in the world. Sharp growth in foreign trade and huge amounts of
FDI pouring in have combined to inject vitality into the Chinese economy,
powering it further ahead.
Globalization is a process in which the world's resources are rationally
distributed and the world's industrial structure is realigned. China enjoys its
own advantage with its low-cost labour force, which has been brought into full
play over the past two and a half decades. As a result, labour-intensive
industries have moved to China quickly. This has helped the employment situation
in the country and pushed the economy ahead.
It is certainly important that high-tech and innovation factors should be
emphasized in future development. Labour-intensive industries, however, will
remain a vitally important factor in propelling China's economy for a fairly
long time to come.
In sum, China's economic progress has been in keeping with the process of
globalization and we can safely state that China is a beneficiary from this
process.
Being the beneficiary of the current international system, how can China be
expected to challenge it and try to topple it? Instead, the country will defend
it and help improve it.
China is the world's largest developing country and the economy is huge. The
country's integration into the international system is bound to bring some
impacts on the system. All developments and events so far, however, point to the
fact that China's influences on the current international system have been
positive. Or in other words, the relationship between China and the
international system is one of benign interaction.
The author is a researcher from the Institute of
American Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
(China Daily 02/23/2006 page4)
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