Message from Ambassador

Chen Shiqiu

Good neighborliness and mutual trust

The beginning of a new century is witness to the 52nd Anniversary of the People' s Republic of China.

For 52 years, China has traveled tortuous roads and experienced trials and hardships. It has gained universally recognized progress and achievement by overcoming difficulties and obstacles. It has made contributions to the peace, prosperity and stability of the world in economic, technical, cultural, political and social aspects.

With the national comprehensive strength improving greatly, China has flanked itself in the rank of world economic powers. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 2000 reached 8,940.4 billion RMB, Over 56 times that in 1949, and an annual increase of 8.3 percent at comparable prices.

From 1979, when China began opening up and reform, to 2000, China's GDP enjoyed an annual average increase of 9.5 percent at comparable prices, which is the period of fastest economic growth in China. Since the beginning of this year, China's economy has kept a good momentum of sustained and fast growth. The GDP in the first half of this year is 4,294.2 billion RMB, up 7.9 percent over the same period of last year.

The next five to 10 years will be a crucial period for China's economic and social development. China will keep up a sustained, rapid and sound economic growth. The blueprint has already been drawn for the development in the next five years. According to the program, continued efforts will be made to promote economic growth and social progress, with development as the main theme, restructuring the key link, reform, opening-up and technological advancement the driving force and higher living standards the ultimate goal.

At present, China is making a strategic readjustment to its economic structure and speeding up the readjustment of its industrial setup, regional structure, urban and rural structure and ownership composition.

China has given prominence to the development of science, technology and education, accelerated the informatization of national economic and social progress, strengthened environmental protection, expedited township development and improved public service system. It is expected that China's GDP will have reached 12.5 trillion RMB (US$1.5 trillion) by 2005.

Reunification of the motherland is the shared aspiration of all Chinese people, it has a bearing on the national dignity of the Chinese people and China's state sovereignty and territorial integrity.

There is only one China in the world. Both Taiwan and Mainland belong to China. China's sovereignty and territorial integrity shall never be broken up. Only when the "One China" policy is adhered to, can peaceful reunification be realized. We have the utmost sincerity to realize peaceful reunification on the principle of "One China, Two Systems".

China has consistently pursued an independent foreign policy of peace and the basic purposes of China's foreign policy are to safeguard world peace and promote common development. China wishes to live with all other countries as equals and conduct friendly exchanges and mutually beneficial cooperation with them on the basis of UN Charter and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. China stands for democracy in international relations, and sovereign equality of all states. China opposes hegemony and power politics.

China is a good neighboring country of Southeast Asia, and attaches great importance on developing relations with ASEAN countries. At the very beginning of new century, some encouraging phenomenon has emerged in China-ASEAN relations: There have been frequent exchanges of high-level visits between leaders of the two sides, and the friendly and good-neighborly relations have continued to grow.

Economic cooperation and trade is increasingly deepening. The cooperative mechanism between the two sides has kept improving. In addition, the two sides have stepped up cooperation and mutual support on some major regional and international issues.

China-ASEAN good neighborly and mutual trust partnership is entering a new period of overall healthy development. Having shaken off the impact of the financial crisis, China and ASEAN realized a record high US$39.52 billion trade volume in 2000, doubling that of the year 1996 when China became a full dialogue partner of ASEAN. In the first quarter of 2001, the trade volume between China and ASEAN reached $9.666 billion, up 21.8 percent over the same period of last year.

For the past years, China-Indonesia relations have kept good momentum. There are frequent high level exchanges between leaders of the two sides. Exchanges and cooperation between the congress, parties, military, youth, women and local governments at provincial and municipal level has been undergoing rapid development, and non-governmental intercourse been evidently active.

The all-dimension bilateral cooperation in the political, economic, social, cultural, educational and technical fields has seen substantial progress. With the recovery of the Asian economy as a whole and the gradual enhancement of the regional cooperation, the bilateral trade and economic cooperation which was once hit by the financial crisis has now been on the way of rapid recovery and new development.

The total trade volume for 2000 hit a record high of $7.46 billion, up by 54.5 percent over 1999. The total trade volume from January to July this year has amounted to nearly $4 billion.

At the beginning of new century, Sino-Indonesia relations are faced with important opportunities for further improvement and growth. Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji will pay an official visit to Indonesia in November.

This visit will further strengthen China-Indonesia all-round cooperation relations of good neighborliness and mutual trust. We are convinced that with concerted efforts of the government and people of both countries, China-Indonesia good neighborly and friendly relations will make new progress in the new century.