China. Xi Jinping: He who has the strongest muscles cannot decide

By Fernando Capotondo, Latin American Digest, July 1, 2024.

China marked the 70th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence with a call to build a community with a shared future and a veiled message to the West.

Background music began to fill the Great Hall of the People in Beijing five seconds before 10 a.m., the scheduled start time of the 70th Conference. Anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. At the appointed time, Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared and, after the required protocol greetings, delivered a speech with strong political content, in which he called for the construction of a community with a shared future for humanity, emphasizing the role of the Global Union. South in the search for peace and argued that true multilateralism must prevent the will of the one with the strongest muscles from imposing itself.

In the presence of some 600 representatives from more than 100 countries, Xi said on Friday that the Five Principles are anti-imperialist, anti-colonial and anti-hegemonic, as they allow abandoning the law of the jungle of militarism and the intimidation of the weak by the strong, in addition to departure, have laid an important ideological foundation for promoting the international order in a more just direction.

They don't go out of style or fade, but rather shine brighter, he noted.

It is not about building iron walls to confront, but rather opening up space through which channels of cooperation can flow, said the general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, in a statement that many interpreted as an obvious message to an addressee who did not need to be mentioned.

World affairs, he insisted, must be settled by all countries. It cannot be allowed that the one who decides is only the one with the strongest muscles.

China's determination to follow the path of peaceful development will not change. We will never follow the old path of colonial plunder, nor the perverse path of national domination. Every time China's power increases, hopes for world peace increase, he added.

Similarly, Xi gave a bit of history and recalled that seven decades ago, the global colonial system collapsed in the face of the global rise of independence and national emancipation movements.

In a world darkened by the Cold War, the law of the strongest became a cry, as new countries aspired to defend their sovereignty and develop their own economies, he noted.

Under this scenario, Xi said, Chinese leaders have for the first time set out the five principles of peaceful coexistence, consisting of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence.

These principles have become the backbone of the joint statements between China, India and Myanmar, and the three countries have jointly pledged to convert them into basic norms for state-to-state relations, Xi said.

Over the course of 70 years, the five principles of peaceful coexistence have transcended time and space and overcome distance, demonstrating their robustness and enduring significance. They have become the basic norms of international relations and the fundamental principles of international law that are open, inclusive and universally applicable, he added.

For the president, once the historical question of what kind of world we want to build and how to build it has been questioned, China has formulated the building of the community with a shared future for mankind as a response to our times, a concept that is precisely inspired by the spirit of the Five Principles, as stressed.

In this regard, he indicated that this virtual update of the Five Principles in new circumstances, sets a new example of equality and coexistence for international relations, corresponds to the current of our times characterized by peace, development, cooperation and shared gain. inspires new ways to achieve development and security.

At this historic moment, he stressed that humanity must choose between peace and war, prosperity and recession, solidarity and confrontation; we must more than ever uphold the connotation of the five principles of peaceful coexistence and make unremitting efforts to achieve the noble goal of building a community with a shared future for humanity.

Against this global backdrop, Xi said the Global South has strong momentum and has played an extremely important role in the progress of humanity, so it should move forward with a more open and inclusive vision, taking the lead in promoting the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.

The Chinese president called on the countries of the South to be the unconditional force for peace, the core engine of open development, the construction team of global governance and the advocates of exchanges among civilizations.

Finally, to promote greater cooperation within the framework of the Global South, Xi announced that China would establish a study center on the Global South, offer 1,000 scholarships for excellence on the five principles of peaceful coexistence and 100,000 seminar and training places to the Global South.

Source: TiempoAR.