Conference to mark key anniversary

President Xi Jinping will attend a commemorative conference marking the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the People's Republic of China's lawful seat in the United Nations on Monday and deliver an important speech.

"The meeting will review the splendid past that China has gone through with the UN and summarize its experience in participating in the reform and building of global governance, thus ushering in a new journey of China-UN cooperation," Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular news briefing in Beijing.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, foreign envoys and representatives from international organizations in China will attend the meeting in Beijing or via video link, Wang said.

On Oct 25, 1971, the UN General Assembly at its 26th Session adopted Resolution 2758 with an overwhelming majority to restore all the rights of the People's Republic of China and to recognize the representatives of the government of the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate representatives of China to the UN.

"These five decades have witnessed China's practice of multilateralism, its full participation in and support for the cause of the UN, and its continuous contributions to world peace and development," said a position paper on China's cooperation with the UN.

The document, which was released on Friday, introduced China's prominent contributions to the UN in various fields of work and expounded China's positions and proposals on a series of important global issues including upholding multilateralism, promoting global development and cooperating with other countries to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

China is the second-largest contributor of funding to UN peacekeeping operations and an important troop provider, contributing more peacekeepers than any other permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Since 1990, it has sent over 50,000 peacekeepers to nearly 30 UN peacekeeping missions and more than 2,200 Chinese peacekeepers are now on duty in eight mission areas, said the document.

After COVID-19 broke out, China actively responded to the UN-initiated Global Humanitarian Response Plan, providing assistance in kind to over 150 countries and international organizations and exporting medical supplies to over 200 countries and regions.

According to the Foreign Ministry, as of Oct 17, China had provided more than 1.5 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to over 100 countries and international organizations.

The position paper said that China will continue to be a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, a defender of international order and a provider of public goods.

Ruan Zongze, executive vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said that by summarizing China's cooperation with the UN over the past half century, people will see that the restoration of China's lawful seat in the UN was a win-win result for both sides.

"As China kept growing over the past 50 years, it has made greater contributions to mankind's peace and development by undertaking a lot of work on global agendas," he said.