Message from Ambassador: Good neighborliness and mutual trust

Message from Ambassador: 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.