China is now in a new phase of its peaceful development. The country now needs to speed up its socio-economic transformation under secure and stable conditions, which require good-neighbourly surroundings and a sound international environment.

To enable this setting, China needs to reach its goal of building a fully xiaokang (fairly well-off) society by peaceful means and along a peaceful path. China must also strive to protect world peace and harmony and promote human development and progress across the globe. Our State leaders of several generations have been espousing this all along: "China should make considerable contributions to mankind." And all our efforts should be based on the ideal of making people our focus.

Based on its national conditions as well as its culture and tradition, a peaceful human-centric path is China's logical choice for progress. People are to society as cells are to life forms. People form a harmonious society.

China's traditional culture of peace puts the cultivation of character above all other concerns. For instance, we encourage pursuits of tireless learning; clean government through thrift and tolerance for peaceful coexistence. We believe sincerity will overcome all difficulties, and open-mindedness ready to accept good advice is far wiser than bias thinking. "A just cause enjoys abundant support while an unjust cause finds little support," one Chinese philosopher wrote.

After the founding of the People's Republic, the Chinese Government attached enormous importance to the espousal of the nation's moral tradition and stipulated clearly that the education of the young consists of ethics, intellect, physical capability and aesthetics, with ethics as the top priority.

Earlier this year, President Hu Jintao spelled out a set of ideas of honour and shame, which he believed all officials and the masses, especially the younger generation, should learn by heart. Those ideas encompass the gist of patriotism, collectivism and socialism, combining perfectly the nation's moral tradition with contemporary spirit. Together they also express vividly our national spirit built around patriotism as well as the contemporary spirit centred on reform and innovation.

In its multi-millennia history, China boasts a few chapters of real prosperity. China then was ahead of the rest of the world not only in the level of economic development but also in culture, arts and political sophistication. Today, traces of this cultural influence radiates from China and can be still found in the rest of Asia. The so-called Confucian culture sphere is a good example of that influence.

The belief that "peace is priceless" is the heart of Chinese cultural tradition. More than 600 years ago, the famous Chinese navigator Zheng He of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) led the largest fleet of sailboats in the world and accomplished the history-making "seven voyages to the west," which took him and his men to more than 30 Asian and African countries and regions.

Unlike many of its latter-day European counterparts, which sailed across the great oceans to conquer other nations by force, the Chinese fleet brought to those foreign lands tea, chinaware, silk and craftsmanship. They gave the rest of the world peace and civilization and never occupied any foreign land, an achievement symbolizing the ancient kingdom's sincerity to increase exchanges with other nations.

In the 100-odd years following the Opium War in 1840, China was thoroughly savaged and humiliated by Western powers. The nation has been striving to eliminate war, achieve peace and build up a prosperous country where people lead a happy existence throughout the years since then.

The Chinese nation wished for lasting peace following the founding of the People's Republic in October 1949. And in 1954, the country was the first in the world to propose the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, a concept born of China's peaceful culture. These were the championing of mutual respect for each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity; no aggression against each other; no interference in each other's internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence. These five principles for handling foreign relations are in fact what should be the universal norm for all nations.

Culture is a kind of "soft power" driving China's peaceful development. The Chinese people hold it as their ultimate goal to build up a harmonious society based on a deep-rooted peaceful culture.

China has chosen the path of peaceful development with an eye on combining domestic development with the policy of opening to the outside world. Peace, openness, co-operation, harmony and a win-for-all are the principles that serve as the central guideline to achieve this result.

In today's China, the ruling party and central government have assigned themselves the tasks of leading the people-focused drive to carry out scientific development and create a socialist harmonious society. This is according to the wishes of the people and for securing the people's interests.

Although China has achieved tremendous success in economic development, its enormous population, less than adequate national strength and unbalanced regional development mean it is still a developing nation.

Pushing forward socio-economic development and continuously improving people's lives remain the central task of the whole nation. China must follow the path of peaceful development to realize the goal of becoming a prosperous and strong country where all citizens enjoy a happy life.

That China's dazzling culture has become an important part of resources for exchanges between the nation and the international community is fully reflected in its handling of foreign relations by consistently emphasizing peace, development, co-operation and independent and self-reliant foreign policies.

It is China's desire to project a "harmonious society" onto the global backdrop and show the world China's peace-loving tradition and moral character.

Today, the world is still working hard to fix the problems preventing it from fully realizing peace. Local wars and regional hot spots break out one after another. Forces of international terrorism, national secessionism and religious extremism are still going rampant in some areas. And the cross-border hazards of environmental pollution, drug trade, cross-national crime and spread of serious epidemics are getting worse. This warrants the idea of building up a harmonious world as a proposal worthy of trying.

Likewise, as economic globalization bares more of its ugly side everyday, many developing countries find themselves sinking deeper into dire poverty. Thus the idea of building up a harmonious world reflects even more the desperate wish of those developing nations to shake off poverty and join the well-to-do crowd.

Today the world is home to many different civilizations. China always believes dialogues and exchanges between different civilizations should be increased so that they can learn from each other's strong points through competition and comparison to offset their own shortcomings and develop simultaneously without losing their uniqueness. Each country has to choose the social system and way of development according to its unique national conditions and the right to do so should be respected.

The author is a senior research fellow of the Research Centre of Contemporary World

(China Daily 08/14/2006 page4)